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Poetry Challenge 63

February 2, 2011

There’s more light on the corral every day now.  Each afternoon, as I leave campus, I take the measure of it–the level of dusk at 5 o’clock, or 4.  Soon, I’ll be able to come home with enough daylight to begin an evening longeing routine for Mattie and Sam, to get all of us in shape for riding season in May.

Last night, I ordered seeds–radishes, my favorite Chianti Rose tomatoes, Laciato kale, zukes and yellow crookneck squash, and an assortment of flowers that I may be able to convince to grow on the steep bank behind the house.

These are all signs of the easing of the season–and then there’s Groundhog Day.  I wrote about it here last year or the year before, but it’s a holiday that has a certain resonance in my memory of being a teenager in Central Pennsylvania: the smell of mud and manure, anticipating the first crocuses, and the ludicrous seriousness of the Slumbering Groundhog Lodge in Quarryville, PA.  I tell the story to my students every year–how the groundhog sees a blinding flash of light, sees his shadow, bolts back into his hole, and we have six more weeks of winter.  Or he doesn’t see the shadow and we have six more weeks till spring.  In either case, here in the Interior, we have three months till break-up, so we look for other signs–our moods lift, for example, as the sun cycles higher above the horizon.

You may be socked in with snow right now of mired in the bad news of the world.  What images keep you hopeful of spring?

Post a poem in response to this challenge and I’ll add it to this post.

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Poetry Challenge 62

January 24, 2011

Shakespeare and (not yet) spring

The signs of the season–more light lingering in the afternoon, an orange sherbet color in the late afternoon sky, the luscious greens, reds, yellows of seed catalog photos, the Fairbanks Shakespeare Theater Bardathon, the sparkle of snow now that the sun’s high enough in the sky to reflect from each crystal.  From Ocala, news of the birth of Fiddle’s newest foal, out of the stallion Shakespeare, named Bard of Avon–splay legged and already showing the high shoulders and strong haunches and just a hint of coil in the spine that can uncoil in a sprint down the track.  Not any where near spring, but far enough away from the darkest winter that we feel ourselves awaken to dream of spring.

Write about what gives you an inkling of hope, a sense of the change of season to come.  Or, like a new foal, what holds promise for the months and years ahead.  Post it in commments and I’ll add it here.

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The Post of Don Sam Incognito

January 20, 2011

Il Cannone

Since solstice, there’s been Christmas and the rush of baking and socializing, then collapse into flu, then travel to Florida to visit family, then a return sick with strep, and now here we are about to begin another semester.  We’ve passed through the darkest time of year, and now the afternoons are lengthening so that there is still some light in the sky at four in the afternoon, and there are longer and longer periods when Mattie and Sam can stand with their sides to the sunlight before the sun shifts behind the ridge.

Sam and Mattie are likely bored and waiting for it to be warm enough—above 10 below, that is—and light long enough for us to be back to our spring training routine.  So I’m not telling them about Ocala and Il Cannone.

We were visiting family in Orlando over the holiday and Ira called his friend, Allison, a former TV writer who loves the process of breeding racehorses—mixing bloodlines, finding a bargain mare at auction and breeding her to a stallion who just might have the right mix of qualities to produce a colt or filly who could run and take our breath away in the process.  It’s a kind of slow gamble fraught with the pleasure of choosing the mare, dreaming of the foal, then seeing it—long legs and all—grow into a two year old in training.

He now owns two mares and their two fillies and a colt, boarded at a brood farm in Ocala. We rented a car and drove north from the gated developments and malls of Orlando to the farm country around Ocala.  I was still a bit sick, maybe even a bit feverish, but when we got to Ocala, I noticed something unusual: there were horse trailers parked everywhere.  The land opened up into farmland—no more swampy areas, and no more palm trees, but slightly rolling pasture land and spreading live oaks and loblolly pines.  Under the trees: horses.

I needed to buy gear for summer riding and we found a tack shop where I found boots, helmet, breeches—all I need for this summer’s Intro A and B—and maybe C–dressage tests.  Then we went to a deli for lunch.  Standing by the cash register, a guy in breeches and boots; at the next table, the talk was horses; the images in the deli were of horses.  I felt much better, suddenly.  Out the window, I saw horse trailers zipping by every few minutes.

We used the GPS to find the horse farm.  As we came to the intersection, there were arrows with the names of farms lined up, pointing in each direction, rather than road signs.  Finally, we turned into a long sandy lane and pulled in under the live oaks where we were greeted by Elaine, on her golf cart loaded with alfalfa, feed buckets, and two Jack Russell terriers.  The air was softly moist, as it can be in Florida, and smelled of pine needles, sharp and sweet.  We followed Elaine to the paddock where a half-dozen brood mares stood, their attention divided between the feed buckets and Elaine and the two strangers.

“When they see strangers,” Elaine told us, “they think it’s either the vet with shots or the farrier.”

We walked into the paddock with her as she dumped the contents of the feed buckets into the feeders in the plank-sided pens at the near end of the paddock.  Each mare knew where her feed pen was and walked into hers as her feed was dropped in.  Elaine closed the pen gates behind each mare and we stood talking about them as they ate.  Allison’s horse, Fiddle, is a small dark chestnut mare, well-built and sweet-faced.  Her colt is Il Cannone, a gentle chestnut yearling, named after a famous violin.

Elaine took us to see the yearlings—a rowdy bunch of colts and one filly–in the next paddock over.  The filly, whose name I’ve forgotten, had a wide blaze and a high-headed alertness—she was already the boss mare.  The yearlings came over to see us and let us scratch their wide foreheads and brushed our hands with their muzzles. Il Cannone sniffed my curled fingers—curled to resemble a horse’s nose.  He was curious and gentle; all the potential of a yearling is in the personality and conformation before humans get much of a hand in.  This bunch seemed playful and energetic and very interested in people.  But Elaine had the buckets. They each went to their feeding pens and waited until Elaine fed them.

All seemed peaceful on the place—the arching live oaks, the tall pines.  We bumped around the farm, three in a golf cart plus two small dogs, and visited some coming two-year olds and some older yearlings.  As we rattled around, Elaine told us about her life in the racing business and how, when she went college, she made sure not to go anywhere more than two hours away from a race track. She dropped out half way through college to make her life with racehorses—the farm is her retirement.  She made the life of a breeder seem so simple, but, as I thought about it, I realized that it seemed simple because of her years with racehorses—on the track, in the breeding shed, on the brood farm, training—a life’s worth of experience.

We stayed as long as we could under the trees, talking, breathing in the pine scent, listening to the horses eating and moving about.  While we were there, a truck and trailer pulled in with a dapple gray filly, just off the track, coming home to the farm to rest up and “just be a horse” for a while.  Elaine went into the stall to greet her and, though the filly had been away on the track for more than a year, it was clear that she knew her as she turned her head towards Elaine in the dark stall.  If I were a racehorse, I could think of no better place to come home to to recover from a stressful season on the track.

Finally we left and made the drive back to Orlando.  We didn’t make it back to Ocala again during that short visit, but now, here in the Interior where it’s hitting 30 below on a full-moon night, I go back to that spot in my mind.  Mattie and Sam don’t know that place exists, and I’m not telling them till spring.

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Poetry Challenge 61

December 30, 2010

Travel

At the turn of the year, the holidays tempt us to travel to visit family, or, for those of us in the Interior, to visit the sun.  As I prepare to fly south for a week, I’m reflecting on the fragmentary memory of previous flights–images of landscape below, fragments of conversation, faces in crowded airports, the adrenaline of rushing down corridors to make a connection.  I remember waking in a plane, puzzling sleepily over the words “White lights lead to red lights”–what could that mean?  It seemed profound after 12 hours of flying.

After the flight, the visit, the return, what’s usually left is just the memory of the highlights of the visit, but what about the memory of travel?  What we ask of our bodies and psyches–hurtling at high speeds through the atmosphere, dropping briefly into unknown spaces with unknown people–is extraordinary.

Write about the lost moments in airports or on planes; make a collage of impressions and see what it forms into.   Post it as a comment and I’ll add it here.

————

Jan 15

A response from Greg Lyons, from his new blog 21st Romantic

Alaska

She falls on her knees to help him
smash the lid of his suitcase shut.
He pulls the tongue back, tightening
the covering with each tooth

clenched. The motion makes a noise
like the turning of an empty stomach
as if this is the first time they’ve talked
about this moment, a whisper

gasping between them. Before the zipping
completes, a sleeve spills out and she stays
his hand with her hand. He nods,
defeated. Their fingers work the sleeve back in

to zip. His bag rolls behind him and her eyes
have bags holding the luggage he has left.

———————————–

Here’s mine.  I’m still processing my recent travels, and will post more on the trip.

(I still haven’t figured out how to copy poems into a post without the extra spaces.  Sometimes it works as with Greg’s poem, but mostly not.)

Pre-dawn, Orlando Airport

Sky above runway: swimming

pool blue, streaks of lemonade

and tangerine, a white cartoon

vapor trail dividing night

from morning.  Dazed awake,

we wait to bolt into air, one

more thrill taking us home.

 

An hour ago, at the curb,

in moist air, you and I

patted backs.

Under my palms, the bones

of your spine curved, a flightless

bird.   That long leisure,

such hard work, bends you.

The sky lightens, a wash

of sun across the waiting room,

each passenger wrapped

in stillness, meditating

the astonishment of flight.

The embrace

 

of memory: one minute a child

listening to dishes clatter

in the kitchen, wrapping

deeper in quilts, hearing

a rumble of voices, a name

that sounds like ours

blinking through dreams

like last night’s

firefly.

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The View from Mattie’s Pillow

December 21, 2010

Dark of the Year/Dark of the Moon

Tonight, Winter Solstice, a day when the energy seems sapped from the waking hours by the cold and the infringing dark.  Today, I glanced out a window at three in the afternoon and, from inside the lighted building,  it looked and felt like midnight.  Usually, I manage to be home around this day of the year–usually perched on a hard chair, coffee in hand, a stack of papers in front of me.  My eyes get blurry after a long session of this–a day or two, depending on the class load–and morning and night begin to merge.  But today, I was up and about, putting in a few hours on campus, advising students.   I was inside for the brief hours of sunlight.

Then, tonight, a shadow dented the moon, then spread over it till it was fully rusty.  We turned off all the lights in the house and went on the deck to watch the last bit of bright moon slip into shadow.   Across the hill, people turned off their lights–even the string of blue Christmas lights we can usually see high on the ridge across the road went dark.  From time to time, somewhere on the dark hillside, a camera flash lit up.

I stood in the twenty below air, in my Muck Boots, down vest, and wool sweater, very still, hands thrust in pockets for warmth.  As the moon darkened, the stars brightened, and gradually the sky seemed dusted with them, crisp against the black curve of space.  For a few moments, I could feel the depth of the galaxy, the universe, as if the strange darkening of the moon cast it all into perspective and I could sense clearly the way we’re falling through that infinite liquid emptiness.  Strangely, it’s a comforting feeling–as if I were reminded of a long journey we’re all on or brought back to focus on the long-way-to-go destination of it rather than the minutiae of getting there, such as waiting, ungraded papers.

Standing there in the unlit night, bareheaded in the cold, my hands deep in the pockets of my down vest, it seemed like a good time to reflect, re-evaluate, refocus on things that truly matter.   Meanwhile, Sam, in the corral, pushed his food dish around like a dog, wanting to get at the last crumbs.  He’s never lost sight of  what matters, as far as he’s concerned.

By the time New Year’s Eve rolls around, we’ll be easing back into the light, making our resolutions, thinking of the first seed catalogs to come.  Tonight is the turning point, and the psyche curls into  a hibernating ball, then stirs to stretch out into another year.

 

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Poetry Challenge 60

December 18, 2010

Days away from solstice now.  The light is slaty blue in the deep afternoon–sundown around 3:30 and losing a minute and a half of daylight each day.  Temperatures hovering at around thirty below.  Things that don’t seem to belong together merge: the cold of metal feels hot to the touch; hands turn to flippers in  layers of gloves topped with mittens; the darkness holds light reflected in all directions by the white snow; the ice on the roads gains friction as the temperature drops; and deep in our drowsing psyches, some wild energy stirs, gives us dreams, reminds us of the extravagance of spring months away.  Someone asked what the brief time between sunrise and sunset should be called and I suggested “dawnset,” the state of daylight for us in the Interior this time of year.

So write about opposites merging, their energy, their resolution into a whole.  Or write a complaint about the deep bitter cold.

 

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Dancing in the North

December 11, 2010

More Nutcracker

On Facebook, a friend posted a You Tube video of a Glass Armonica recording of the Sugar Plum Fairy. This music is unavoidable this time of year and in many bad renditions, but this one, played by rubbing wet fingers across spinning half globes of glass, caught the magic, the delicacy, and the precise optimism of the music.

I’m always brought back to the deeper threads of the Nutcracker at this time of year.  Last week, watching our Nutcracker, I paid special attention to the progression of Fairies in the piece.  First the Snow Fairy, in her crisp white tutu, surrounded with dancers in Romantic tutus—calf-length, floating with each movement.  The music swirls them along, and the pas de deux is energetic and full of anticipation.   Everything sparkles as Clara watches, and snow filters down on the bare backs of the swirling snowflakes.

The Snow Fairy is pristine, innocent, hopeful, glamorous—a young girl’s naïve dream of her adult self.  The Cavalier is gallant, lifting his white-tutued partner in shoulder-sits and jetes.  The choir joins in—angelic, anticipatory—and the Snow Fairy leads the group on through the spangled winter scene to all that lies ahead.

Then, after intermission, the Snow is gone, and we are in springtime—warm light, dancing flowers, and the busy flitting about of the Dew Drop Fairy.  I once heard Norman, directing a Dew Drop Fairy, say that she is his favorite role in the ballet—she is liquid, bursting with life, bringing the flowers to bloom.  And, at least in our version, she dances alone, touching the flowers as she passes, diverting their motion by her touch.  She welcomes Clara to the Land of Sweets with her newly humanized Prince (who’s no longer a wooden grotesque, the Nutcracker), and she introduces them to the Sugar Plum Fairy and her court.

For Clara, Dew Drop represents a path she could, but ultimately does not take—a solo female role, powerful in all the traditionally female attributes (the ballet is rooted in the 19th century, after all)—nurturing, creating order, displaying beauty in the flowers and in her own gorgeous tutu.  In our ballet, her tutu is a rich dark green with tear drop pearls and sequins on the crisp flat skirt.   She is self sufficient, but alone.  But Clara already has her bond with the prince and the puzzle of the second act is how she will fulfill the potential of this gift of a partner.

The Sugar Plum holds the key, and she presents Clara and the Prince with a series of alternatives: the sultry Spanish dance, with its intimations of the bull ring as the dancers pass and parry; the erotic Arabian dance, with its exploration of power and allurement and ultimate submission; and Mother Ginger, drawn from the Commedia del Arte image of the comic prostitute, the Old Woman in the Shoe, who has so many children she doesn’t know what to do—a cynical vision of adult womanhood that is comic in its cross-dressing exaggeration.  Clara and the Prince watch all this play out, and we move through these phases with them, the music subtly working on us to prepare us for the final choice—the Sugar Plum.

We are ready for her when she appears, having been soothed by the Waltz of the Flowers and the Dew Drop’s ability to restore order to the scene after the chaos of Mother Ginger’s appearance.  There is a pause in the music, and the Sugar Plum and her Cavalier appear.  The music darkens; at least it darkens beneath the upper registers, which still seem sparkly.  There is a longing, a poignancy to the music.  You sense that the Sugar Plum and her Cavalier have earned their moment in the ballet through some past series of sorrows and joys.  The lifts, turns, carries are done to rising themes in the music, as if they have triumphed, and the consequence of the triumph is the trust they display in their pas de deux.  They are both the feminine and masculine of experience—the sparkling, twirling Sugar Plum and the leaping, lifting Cavalier.  When the dance is finished, they present themselves to Clara, as if to say, “Here’s what a fully developed human life is like—incorporating the opposites of joy and sorrow, strength and delicacy, passion and restraint.”  The company dances the celebratory apotheosis, and Clara and the Prince stand together ready to accept the kingdom of Sweets as their own territory, ready to step into adulthood.

And we, the audience, watching the ballet in the coldest, darkest time of year, can be rejuvenated, as well, and sent back into the path of our own lives reminded of the possibility of living them so well that we incorporate the Sugar Plum and her Cavalier—sweetness and strength—into our own lives.  In the crisp, unforgiving cold and the perfect whiteness of snow, we remember spring and all there is to long for and nourish in the days to come.

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Dancing in the North

December 5, 2010

The Nutcracker: a Prelude

 

A brief word on the Nutcracker, since our last performance will be today at 2 in Hering Auditorium.

Last night’s performance was radiant.  This year’s cast is a mix of upcoming North Star Ballet dancers, a couple of returning dancers, and guests at different stages of their careers.  Although the sets have been the same for over twenty years, they still remain fresh to me–it’s like entering a beloved childhood home, slightly distorted in the manner of dreams.

I have long wanted to write more on the Nutcracker, having written publicity articles on our local version of it for nearly 15 years now.   Since the Nutcracker season everywhere can extend from now to New Year’s, I’ll post a few meditations on the story and its archetypes and significances–at least as I see it.

Mostly, don’t dismiss the Nutcracker.  At the end of last night’s performance, I thought of how this ballet, unlike, say, Swan Lake, contains no tragedy (unless you are a mouse, that is), and that this lack of tragedy allows some viewers to dismiss it.  But for me, the ballet represents a rite of passage–for the dancers, for Clara/Marie moving from childhood to adulthood, and for us, the audience, watching this ritual ballet as we head into the darkest time of year.  Who wouldn’t want to go to the Land of Sweets and be ushered into the future by the ever-competent Sugar Plum Fairy?

I’ll be there this afternoon, tearing up as I always do–the gorgeous music with its dark undertones and its possibility of light and hope–and defending my bid on the ten-pound bag of organic carrots at the silent auction!

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The Post of Don Sam Incognito

December 5, 2010

A quick update before I head to the Nutcracker.

A fellow writer, Sue Ann Bowling, has been running a series of posts on her blog Homecoming on the genetics of horse color.   She recently posted on the palomino and the genetics of a black coat–and used a photo of Mattie to illustrate a black horse who gets brown in her coat in summer.  I’m still not clear on Mattie’s color.  It’s more romantic for her to be a black, but there’s less cultural baggage in how humans view her if she’s a dark bay–a bit more ordinary and less of a diva, in her case.

As for Sam–the flea-bitten gray whose winter coat is completely white–I’m still waiting to see what she has to say about that color pattern.

Sue’s a scientist–a meteorologist by profession–who has dedicated a lot of her life to training border collies and has a life-long love of horses.  Though she can no longer ride, she faithfully comes to the fair to watch the dressage–part of a small crowd of dedicated dressage fans in the interior.  In past years, I was in that crowd; this year, Mattie and I were in the arena.  Still fans, but taking the next step.

Sue is also a “speculative fiction” novelist–writing in the genre that crosses the line between science fiction and fantasy.  Her book, Homecoming, was released this year–I read early drafts years ago–and is getting some nice reviews.  She has a new book in the works, too.

We’ve gone from freezing rain, to deep cold, to normal temperatures around ten below.  Mattie and Sam are bored, but doing the horsey things they do in winter–positioning themselves to catch the sunlight as it slants into the corral for a brief hour or so each day, flipping the tires in their corral to see if any bits of hay are still inside, and standing at the fence, staring at the hay barn, hoping some passing human will take the hint.  We’re about two weeks out from solstice now–the dark time, the quiet, inward time of year.  In a month, the light will be returning, and on days of zero or above when I can get home before dark, I’ll begin the slow process of longeing and ground work to get them fit for summer.

Till then, it’s fun to read Sue’s detailed writing on horse colors–enjoy!

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Poetry Challenge 59

December 2, 2010

Answering Joe

After last week’s strange rain and icy sheets on all the roads, trees, fences, cars, we’re now having normal weather for early December in the Interior—twenty below and colder.  The mornings are darker now, with a glow of orange above the jagged ridgeline of the Alaska Range.  In this deep cold, I am thinking of my friend Joe Enzweiler, who is battling brain cancer and whose conversation, poetry, and laughter have warmed winter Thursday nights at my house for many years before this one.

 

I posted this poem of Joe’s in January 2009—and it seems apt for today.   When you read the poem, pick a word or image and write a poem back to Joe, starting with that word.  Send me the poem in the comment section and I’ll add it to this post.

 

In Thanks

For these, blue evening
like a child’s brush,
one star.
Three redpolls, frost
on the nail heads,
white steeple of alder
below the grand
terrible night.
And a beating heart
in which they’re known.
The amazement of our
morning sheets.
Four redpolls now,
then five
in the dust of the day.
For all that stirs
beyond the clearing
as the soft daylight
wicks off.
For the wondrous timepiece
unwinding,
in silence
for life
we bow.

–Joseph Enzweiler
(from The Man Who Ordered Perch
Iris Press, Oak Ridge, Tennessee
2004)

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