January SPC 2: Lollipop

Today, I celebrate the marvelous, huge, sweet-and-sour lemony flavored, multicolored, utterly lickable lollipop that is Life.

Cakes Continue to Rise
by Rick Agran

A pancake with its burnt side down
is still burnt.
No amount of pancake syrup can hide it.

And the heel of stale white bread
is not camouflaged
inside the peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

I’ve jumped in front of the oven.
Cakes never fall
as you have always threatened.

And baloney is not enhanced by frying it.

Spoonfeed me a rich tapioca
of truth.
I swear, I can take it.

Help me cut my uncertainties
into littler pieces.
You’ve always been afraid I’d choke.

Give me the lollipop of life
and I promise
I will run with it in my mouth.

Poetry Self-Challenge: The Witching Hour

bone-white moon shaking down
the deadwood treetops, singing
out the heart-dark sky
and the cold glass star shards trembling
with light–
shiver and shake,
shiver and shake,
until twilight’s promise is loosed
into the thorny, wind-straggling branches
on the mirror-side of dawn

Feeling quiet…

I don’t know if it’s the cold weather (barely above 0 for the last few days) or the sleep I’m not getting or the impending doctor’s visit with inevitable bad news, but all this week I have felt…very still, very quiet. Fighting the urge to be completely silent, afraid of what will happen if I withdraw that much. But it is too cold and too quiet, both inside and outside of my mind, to do anything other than hunker down into the blankets and let my soul hibernate. So my apologies in advance if I am absent for a little while. At the very least, I’ll be back next week with a photo-poem and SPC. Until then, warm wishes and golden quietude to all.

Poetry Self-Challenge: Smoke over Water

smoke over water
tinted with the blood of the setting sun 
the earth trapped between ghostly breezes
fading into a cobalt distance
a hazy horizon parting beneath the sky’s embers

Everyday fairy tale

Here I am at the end of the week, returning to its beginning: the abandoned, scarred house that fueled so many of my dreams as a child. I remember there was also a huge red barn on the property–something else I always wanted to explore, but didn’t think about when we photographed the house. It’s funny how close this house is to a main road–if you know what you’re looking for, you can even see the white walls of the gas station through the leftmost arch of this picture. And yet, that house always seemed to exist in its own little world. You can park at the gas station and walk just a few steps off the parking lot, and suddenly you are surrounded by the enchanted woods, and everything is still and quiet. The modern world you’ve left behind ceases to exist and there is nothing but the trees and ivy and birds, and the beautiful, empty arches welcoming you. As a child, I imagined it as the refuge of young orphans (who later discovered they were of royal birth), the ruins of a castle under some wicked enchantment. I am almost 25 now, and it has been nearly three years since I last saw this house, but I look at these pictures quite frequently, and every time, those dreams stir anew in my heart.

The beauty of reinvention

Some days are just so beautiful, so full of wonder and discovery, even when they don’t go as planned. For example, at the first of the year, we went out to Idaho to see the bald eagles that spend the winter at Wolf Lodge Bay. The last time we went, several years ago, there were so many eagles it was impossible not to spot them. This year, we didn’t see a single one, but it was a special day nonetheless. A day of snow-gilded trees and silver-white mountaintops above wintery, coal dark lakes. A day of winding highways burrowing deep into mountains and shreds of cloud veiling the world and the glowing sky. It’s been so long since we’ve driven past Couer D’Alene that I actually forgot how incredibly gorgeous it is out there. And maybe it’s just because I’m from Texas and there was never anything like this in that warmer climate, but I am always so impressed by sights like this. Sometimes icicles are just icicles, completely ordinary. And sometimes they are angel’s wings, a slippery staircase, or a row of beautiful, deadly daggers handing from the belly of a mountain. They are something mundane reinventing themselves into the extraordinary.

Poetry Self-Challenge: The Beautiful Decay

Last Monday, in an attempt to inspire myself to write something, I posted a set of photographs along with a poem that I wrote on the spot based on the strange appeal that those blurry gold pictures had for me. The poem was…well, perhaps a bit strange, but I was rather pleased with the outcome and with the way this forced me to stretch my writing skills. So I have decided to challenge myself to do this once a week: find a photo or several that spark something in me, and draft up a poem then and there from those pictures.

And so here is this week’s photo-poem. This abandoned house has been sitting in a vacant lot next to a gas station only a mile from the house I grew up in–I spent 19 years dreaming about that house, making up stories for it, and I finally got to go explore it in May 05 when Sean & I were visiting my family.

 

 

 
I am the beautiful decay, the half
forgotten lover
I am the haunt of nomads and ghosts
I am a shameless wanton,
parading my tarnished jewels
but beneath the dust, I still shine

 

 

I am the bittersweet tale of ruin,
the sagging and creaking of bones
I am the strained lullaby hidden
in Time’s fierce-clenched jaw
I sing in the silence and ashes
of the years

 

 

I am the elemental, the raw exposure
of rusted steel and rotting timber
I am the doorway ablaze with light
I am the scattering of debris,
the charred walls and white hearth
stones still clinging to purity

 

 

I am abandoned youth, the aging
debutante cloaked in anathema
I am the subtle patina of wisdom
I am the triumph of Nature,
resplendent in my crown of ivy
I am the gilded rose beneath the wreckage

Wish: January SPC #1

For me, taking down the Christmas tree and decorations is always such a bittersweet event. Christmas is such a beautiful season, and it never seems to last long enough. But it’s the second week of January…it’s time to pack everything away. Every year, I go to a certain little coffee shop in downtown Spokane to buy my stocking stuffers because they have a huge selection of gourmet candy and treats. This last Christmas, I also found this lovely star ornament in that shop, and it immediately jumped to my favorite ornament of all time. So today, I celebrate Christmas 07, which was so lovely and quiet for us, and I celebrate packing up all things Christmas–a new year beginning with a wish upon a star.

lights

drenched in a haze of saffron light,
a new season at the heart of winter:
spring-washed emerald, the whispered
shadow silhouetted behind summer’s
whitehot glow, tinged with sparks of
autumnal gold

 

 

crowned with a jagged blaze,
sharphot edges carving out a space
of belonging,
the beautiful throes of birth
against a dead season:
there is no cold here

 

 

a shaking star captured in the womb
between small frozen suns
–tearing loose,
sweethot pain of new life:
I will cradle the shaking stars close,
til they blaze Spring in my breast.

Unexpected gifts

Can you believe this was the view out my living room window last night? I live smack in the middle of the city, one block away from the busiest street in town and only two houses in from another main road. Sometimes I feel so claustrophobic being able to see the traffic from almost any window in the house. Just a few days ago, somebody crashed into the streetlight at our corner, knocking it into the yard of the house you can see just across the street in this picture. Days like that, I want to move away so badly, buy a huge plot of land in the middle of some gorgeous nowhere. And then there are days like yesterday, where even in the heart of the city I can look out on that same busy street and find a perfect winter wonderland instead. And those are the days that are most precious to me.