Poetry Challenge 18

April 24, 2009

Small Chores

Our lives are full of small maintenance tasks that we do without thinking about them much. These tasks–brushing teeth, washing clothes or dishes, cooking–form a framework that the other “meaningful” activities we do can be built on. If we rush past one of these tasks and forget it, things seem out of kilter.

For example, today I had a routine visit from my farrier, Tom, to trim Mattie and Sam’s hooves. Standing there holding the horse while Tom trims and rasps, I notice how each visit marks the passage of time–today we stood in soft mud; last time it was 10 below–and how the horses relax into the moment, as if they know we are tending their welfare. For a few moments, they and we have the sense that all’s right with the world.

Write about a small maintenance task, the objects involved, the textures, smells, shapes, etc. Don’t worry about the big picture. It’s always there in how we do small things.

——–

Response from Glow:

Toklas
no question
over 6 years
8:00 AM, 8:00 PM
insulin shots for the cat
4389 times in 12-hour spaces
rhythms our lives settle between.
On this rhythm our careers were cobbled
patchwork research, loving, cooking conducted
travel parceled out among one of us at a time
tenure built and won while one of us ensured insulin
documentary film created while one of us measured glucose
trips to the vet, crisis consultatons, kindness doled out
litter boxes organized, filled, emptied, a kind of skill
meanwhile dinners fixed, lunches packed
love made, showers taken, groceries
alloted among shelves packed with
cat supplies, needles, bottles
special canned food, best dry
new small round dishes
flowers, fruit, leaves
best size for bites
of tempting treats
designed to lull
diabetes to
sleep

———-

Here’s my response to this prompt:

Opening the Greenhouse

Last summer’s tomatoes
pale as skeletons,
brittle leaves:
lace handkerchiefs dangle
from bony fingers.

My fingers itch
for dirt. I tug the stems
pull the dead roots
from last year’s soil,
these plants I tended
each day, wept
to give over to frost.

I tip the planters
so dirt piles
in a plastic bin;
stack them to be washed
and the vines to compost.

I sweep the wooden bench
of dirt and leaves
where the plastic flats
hold new tomatoes,
inches high, stretching
for sun.

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And the Horse

April 23, 2009

This is not an excerpt from the book of essays, but rather a note of sorrow for all those involved in the loss of the polo ponies in Florida.  It’s hard to imagine what it was like to watch horse after horse collapse.  It’s harder still to imagine what life in the barn is like now while all are awaiting the toxicity report.  There’s speculation that the horses were given a tainted vitamin injection–something routinely done, minus the taint, to help horses maintain muscle recovery after the stress of athletic competition.

No one would have wanted this to happen.   We can only wait to find out how it did and how those involved will respond.

Mattie and Sam send their condolences.  As do I.

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The Post of Don Sam Incognito

April 23, 2009

Not much to report on the training scene right now as we wait for the corral to clear of packed ice and snow melt. Sam and Mattie are responding to the clicker training, but I’m not sure I’ve been trained well enough to make it stick at this point. When I click the clicker, Sam arches his neck down, knowing that a treat will follow. But he’s so smart and has been able to push people around for so long, that he eventually tries to get around me to get the treat without the work.

I spent some time on You Tube the other night watching videos of Andalusians doing high school tricks and movements. These were Mexican Andalusians, mostly, broad-backed, high strung, athletic. I watched the passage and piaffe to see what the riders did with their aids and whips. Some of the riders weren’t trying to be subtle, so I could see how they shifted their weight at each step and even cued the horses’ shoulders during the Spanish Walk. One horse crouched down in piaffe to launch into cabriole, leaping up and kicking his hind legs straight behind him.

I watched horses at liberty and under saddle; some were Spanish, some French, some German. Many of them did tricks, as well, bowing, lying down with the rider then getting up again. None of this is usual dressage arena fare, but it gave me some ideas of how Sam may have been trained at one point and why he’s so excitable about being asked to work.

Today, I decided to get back to working with them, despite the moonscape quality of the corral. Both horses are a bit too fat right now, in spite of my care in how much hay they get at each feeding. I’ve decided that the hay–from two different growers–has two different levels of sugar content. I’m feeding mostly from one side of the hay barn now, trying to empty out that bay so I can clean under the pallets and fill it up again with the first cutting of summer. But they’re doing too well on it, and now we need to cut back a bit and step up the exercise a bit.

Which brings me to today. Monday, I was in the corral with Sam trying to scrape some of the manure layer off the packed snow/ice layer. It was a lovely warm afternoon, and Sam wanted to play gelding games with me. I wanted him to be a cuddly horse, one that I could lean against, forehead to forehead, as I had once done with my childhood horse, Bambi. Sam is a trickster, and I knew better, but I was off my guard, and busy with the rake and shovel. He came over and put his face near mine and swung it toward me as I moved, catching me on the mouth. I got a split lip and more determination to follow through with the clicker work. I’ve gotten too casual with it.

Today, I had him on a lead rope, standing in the middle of the corral. I had the clicker and gave the command, “Stand” and clicked and treated only when he stood still with his head straight in front of him and not at my pocket or near my face. He tried backing up–no treat. He tried holding his head sideways the way I taught him to at the command, “Wait”–no treat. Eventually he got it, though it’s still a pose for him.

I managed to get piles of white hair out of his winter coat using the shedding blade and got him to stand untied while I picked his feet–even the hind, which he likes to feint cow-kick when I go to pick them up. After we did this, I tacked him up in longe gear: a nylon surcingle, cavesson, a longeing headstall and bit, sidereins. We’ve gotten a bit stuck in our longeing, something he used to do like a champ. Now he just wants to circle his hindquarters around to face me. I know I’ve done something to give him this idea, but don’t know what.

Instead of longeing, and in spite of being all tacked up, I just walked him around the corral with my hand on his neck, companionable, but maintaining the space between us. When we did this, he seemed relaxed and interested. When I tried backing off and moving him forward with the longe whip, he got the old doubtful look in his eye. So, I put the whip away and walked with him, but a little farther away, marking the space with a pointed finger rather than the longe whip. At one point he was far enough out on the line that he began to trot. He wouldn’t do this to the other side, but I decided that, given the ice and muck in the corral–not good conditions for going faster than a walk–that this was good enough. I ended the session by scratching him on the withers and down the groove in his back over his spine. He stool high headed, twisting his upper lip in pleasure. I don’t remember him liking to be scratched so much, but maybe he’s only now trusting me enough to let me find the spot. He was pretty shut down three years ago when he first came to us.

Then I worked with Mattie on “Ears up” and groomed her and worked with her at liberty–a trust exercise for her and for me. She didn’t trot, but walked well away from me at the pointing of the driving whip. Mattie is less of a puzzle to me because I know what she doesn’t know and she’s very clear–sometimes threateningly so–when she’s confused or worried about what I’m asking. Then I back off a little and try again in another way. In spite of this, she really does trust me and will let me lean against her and will rest her head on me in a way Sam won’t.

Lots of preliminary work, still, before the corral is in good enough shape to ride, but all in all, a good day with horses.

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Poetry Challenge 17

April 22, 2009

Now that spring is on its way here in the Interior, we’re watching for little changes that mean we’re really done with winter. Willow buds puff out into pussywillows; low spots in the road fill with water during the warm parts of the day; geese, cranes, and ducks flock in to feed and rest on Creamer’s Field, then straggle north to breed. The big, unmistakable change will be when the ice goes out on the river in Nenana and we learn who had the best guess–and a little more spending money for summer projects.

So write about the small changes that happen where you are that signify a larger change. It doesn’t have to be about spring, or not just about spring. Focus on the little things and let us read through to the big ones.

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The View from Mattie’s Pillow

April 20, 2009

Spring progresses here. As I sit at the kitchen table writing this, the sun warms my back. Behind me, by the large window, are four flats of tomato plants in small yogurt cups. Again, this year, I couldn’t resist planting all the seeds in the packet–a small forest of tomatoes.

Yesterday, we spent two hours in the corral, scraping up the manure that fell between snowstorms this winter, now a brown stew on packed and melting ice. Both Mattie and Sam have snow on at least half of each of their sections of corral, packed and grainy. Sam paws at the snow till he’s loosened the surface, then lies down and rolls, flipping from one side to another in his glee at the motion. Mattie rolls, too, then stands, shakes out snow and her shedding hair, then bucks or canters toward the fence to nip at Sam, who nips back, crow hops, clatters the metal fence panels, then trots away. Mostly, though, they doze in the sun, as if saving up its warmth against next winter.

The corral looks like a frozen moonscape–the brown stuff emerging through packed ice. Here and there, sand shows through, saturated with melt water that has nowhere to go till the frozen ground beneath it melts and can drain. In the woods above our house, the ground is still thick with snow, though at the top of the cut bank behind the house, wet loess is emerging. Shasta daisies that I’ve planted there over the years emerge from the snow, leaves already green–I don’t know how–and ready to begin the season. It will be June before they flower, though.

This is breakup in Interior Alaska. The roads are slick with melting snowpack. Where there’s exposed road, puddles form and potholes deepen. The first of the local greenhouses have opened–warm with sun and furnace air, moist with blooming plants. We’re six weeks away from planting time.

The river is still frozen, but getting soft in spots. On our drive toward town, we can see the Tanana arching through its slow bends and oxbows as it heads toward Nenana. Even last week, we could see people walking dogs on its white surface or clustering around a few ice fishing holes. But gray patches are forming–slush ice–and by the end of the week, no one will be walking there as channels of open water carve through the ice.

In Nenana, the tripod, whose movement marks the final moment of breakup for us, is still firmly lodged in ice. After the river clears in Fairbanks and all that swift water, ice, driftwood, and anything else that got left on the ice this winter rushes down stream, it will raise the water level in Nenana where the Tanana joins the Nenana River just above the tripod site set up each year for the Nenana Ice Classic. Each year, the tripod is set up just out from the historic railroad station, a long wire strung from it to a clock by the bank.  The wire will trip the clock, stopping it the moment the tripod moves downstream. We buy tickets with the day, hour, and minute we predict the clock will stop–a 50/50 game, with half going to the village of Nenana and half divided between everyone who has a lucky guess.

But breakup is tricky. Some years a channel forms where the tripod is and moves it just enough to trip the clock, though the rest of the river is iced in. Or the opposite–the river will clear, but the tripod is stuck in the one patch of ice that doesn’t move. One year, the tripod tipped nearly far enough to trip the clock–but not quite–then rested in that position for days. But eventually it all washes downstream and we go about the business of summer.

Here’s the Ice Classic site:  http://www.nenanaakiceclassic.com/

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Poetry Challenge 16

April 15, 2009

Memory

I think there’s an equation between memory and imagination. The more detailed our memory, the more imagination we use to supply that detail, which in turn allows us to invent poems or stories that are grounded in authentic detail. Both memory and imagination use the same areas of the mind.

So, pick a detail from an early memory. Enter into the memory of the detail, remembering with all five senses. Write about it without explaining or filling in what you now know.

Here’s a memory from Glow:

blue, red, and yellow birds
circled around my head
wingless endless loops
dipping soaring floating
tinkling in the breeze
from the overhead fan
flies, dazed with heat,
panted and crawled on the birds
my discovery of my toes and fingers
amazing to my eyes bleary from floaters
lilac so sweet floated among
smells of chicken frying
in the kitchen.
Black arms, hands with pink insides
pick me up, pet my parchment white skin,
cherry chocolate lips sing me ancient lullabies
lulling me with words about
birds and true love
and whispers of revolution.

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Poetry Challenge 15

April 9, 2009

The Moon as Food

Tonight, the moon was first the color of orange sherbet, then crème brulee. It occurs to me that I often think of the moon in terms of food. What things that are not food do you think of in metaphors of food? Write about an object, an experience, a feeling and let food–such as strawberries, eggs, romaine lettuce–creep to the poem.

——————————————————–

Here are two responses from Glow, who loves food, dogs, kitties:

my fiddle teacher brings her dogs to her studio
one of them sighs when my bow screeches
the lemon sounds pucker her patience
she sighs and leaves the room
I have progressed over the weeks
now my bowing is less like sour lemons,
more like olives, heavy ripe, still tangy, often bitter
I have tried to sweeten my sounds
tried to avoid making the dog sigh
desperate for canine approval, or at least not canine rejection
I cooked up a new idea:
treats hidden among my music.
both dogs now lay unsquirming at my feet
seemingly eating up the lemon sounds
understanding that each squirt of screech
is rewarded by a stealthy tasty bit

—————————-

many orange cats
have woven and spun through my life
all but one of them male
many had food names
pumpkin for his roundness
persimmon, discovered in persimmon season
among ripe fly buzzing fruits scattered around him
sherbert, or bert for short, creamsickle color
orangeaid, a neighbor cat who stayed with us a year
then disappeared, only to reappear three years later
with one less ear
toklas, the subject of Stein’s lifting belly
sunny, a pool of orange sunshine and sunny disposition,
a melted puddle of frozen orange juice
hesitation named for the hestitation waltz,
the way he approached his food
that had to be placed under the bed
he was so freaked out by the LSD
previous owners had given him
And the one female orange kitty
no food name,
but named for joy and elation like food:
Jubilee.

—————————

My try at this one:

Waiting for rivers’
crack and slide, ice crashing
along banks, grinding
small rocks smaller,
the flat slabs
cutting the spring air
like slow sails, picking
up speed as dark water
seeps up, trickles, gushes.

Now, the ice, flat,
as birthday cake
a child has poked
a finger into here and there;
a few people wander the surface
or lean over holes, dangling
line, peering through slush
for the ripple of fins,
the dark running current.

The sun.
The bright gleam.

The waiting willows.
Memory of green things.

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The View from Mattie’s Pillow

April 7, 2009

When I first started writing these posts, it was deep winter. I wrote from a comfy chair (see the post on Ed’s Chair, March 2) close to the wood stove, so I could write and stoke the stove as I went. The energy-inefficient but psyche-efficient wall of glass that looks out over the Tanana River valley was mostly dark, reflecting the cozy room back to me as I wrote.

Now the day is bright and light lingers in the northern sky past 10:30 at night, a kind of watery blue at the horizon deepening to ultramarine above us. Gradually, in the weeks to come, the darkness will bleach out of the sky altogether, leaving us with only a few hours of deep pastel sunset/sunrise and hours and hours of blissful sunlight.

Already, I can feel the drive of energy that summer brings. The people I know here feel it, too. We’ve started our long-season seeds–I have tomato plants three inches high on a shelf by my wall of glass. They’re ready to be transplanted into small yogurt containers that I spent hours drilling drain holes in last summer. I have more starts to plant as the weeks go on and we get closer to our optimal outdoor planting date, June 1.

But spring has its downside. There are people among my friends and acquaintances who are struggling now that winter is finally, inevitably passing. The snow is still good for skiing, but will be too mushy and slick soon; the roads will be subject to black ice as rain starts to fall; all the trash and horse and other manure will be emerging soon. If things aren’t well with the psyche, now is when it really shows. March is tough for us all here–we’re impatient by then. April can be delightful for some, but others fall away.

So is April the cruelest month, as Eliot suggested? Or is it cruel in that it reminds us how separated from the rhythms of the land we’ve become? Like the redpolls that flit through the willows to dive-bomb my feeder, like Mattie and Sam dozing sideways to the sun, like the swelling tips of willows ready to bud into pussywillows, we feel the urge of spring, even though it’s not quite here in the Interior. If the life we lead keeps us inside out of the breeze, the melting snow, the mud, something primal chafes. But if we can get out in the air for even a little while, perhaps that chafing can heal. Even better if we can be out in it with friends.

For me, besides my human friends with whom I’ve been working on some difficult projects lately, being outside with Mattie and Sam, feeling those partnerships renewed as we work towards our first riding day of the year–after the ice has melted from the corral and the inevitable puddles have drained through the sand–restores me to balance. Yesterday the temperature was near 60 by the hay barn, and I stood detangling Sam’s mane and his full tail. The snow, melting, fell in chunks from the greenhouse roof, and Sam would startle, then relax. He wasn’t as pushy as he usually is, and he seemed to enjoy the attention. After nearly four years, he is starting to trust me. Later I did the same for Mattie, her black coat so warm in the sun it made me sleepy.

I often tell my friends to come pet a horse when they feel weighed down. They laugh, thinking I’m joking. I’m not. There’s nothing better I know.

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Poetry Challenge 14

April 6, 2009

Defy Gravity

Inspired by the ballet. Write about gravity and what defies it–birds, the wind, climbing plants, a dancer. These things lift our spirits, but don’t say that in the poem. Let the object, gesture, scene do the lifting.

———————————————

Here’s my response, though it took me in a different direction–a different kind of gravity:

You, Walking

Birches stir
the restless air;
you walking
away, dog at your heels.

Your coat
drapes your shoulders
billows slightly
gray as spring clouds.

I pause, watching
in the car mirror–
your slow steps
over packed spring snow.

The sorrows of others
hang on you, but
imagination is vast,
cris-crossed with dreams
full of flying, of horses running,
of tomatoes, sweet
and warm on the palm.

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Poetry Challenge 13

April 2, 2009

13 Ways

In honor of Poetry Month, and because this is Challenge 13, take a tip from Wallace Stevens’ “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird.” Pick something at random–I once wrote one on a roll of masking tape–and write 13 short “views” of the thing, ranging from the minute view to the grand.

Stevens’ poem starts:

“Among twenty snowy mountains,
The only moving thing
Was the eye of the blackbird.”

Here’s a link to the whole poem:

http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15746

And here’s a site with poets who are writing a poem a day during April. Don’t know if I’ll be that ambitious.

http://peninkpaper.blogspot.com/

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