Home is asking to be wrapped. Rooms wait ready to spill out door, into arms of strangers, onto trucks, into cardboard, buried in storage, carted on boat. Too many bins and boxes for my little head: what to keep, what to store, what to sell, what to bring to Bowen, what to ship out east, what to give to family, what, where, how, when…

But I know life sits out of hand. In arms a billion star courses wide. And I take her hand, now one-year-old, and walk our path to smiling eyes. Sit in her chair at our coffee house. Visit our park, swing our swings, dip in our wading pool, visit our friends, roll all over green carpet thick, laid out under our trees, eat sushi where they remember our alaska rolls and our names.

Soon, together three, we will light new paths, grieve old ones, sit huddled in front of burning hearth, welcome friends at ferry dock and feed hungry mouths, rest weary heads in our island home. We hear the Voice who’s laid out our mornings, years, seeking Face that tells our story. These six months will set a course, I can feel it.

There is much ahead. Family to forge. Words to write. Poetry to spill. Schooling to ingest. Home to make.

I met a friend while visiting in-laws last week who told me her story. Of her travels to Romania, working with Gypsies, igniting a call to international law. She’s running toward it. This relit my heart to study more: media’s impact on democracy — how our incessant ingesting of information shapes our understanding of citizenship. Perhaps a Masters in Toronto, time and prayer will tell.

Much is afoot in my little writerly life. The book, the one about women who seek Jesus but don’t all look like suburban mammas, edgy, world-changing gals who rock tats, paint up storms, influence politics here and overseas, is out as a proposal… seeking an agent / publisher. I’ll post some pages so you can see. Poetry is being submitted, I’ll share as it makes its way onto pages. I hope to start having others share their poetry here. I’ve been inspired by my friend Emily’s imperfect prose Thursdays.

My sister-in-law, Brittany, and I have a crazy idea of starting a little onesie company, using my husband’s adorable old Scouting badges: Badge of Honour onesies on Etsy. We’re setting up shop as I type.

For now we take the days as they come, living them full, here in our home in Burnaby… Thank you for sharing this adventure with us.

Last week I had the privilege of sitting down with three other poets to write over pints (theirs) and chamomile tea (mine.) Diane Tucker, fresh off the plane from NYC, brought with her a number of writing exercises from renowned educator, Kenneth Koch’s Rose, Where did you get that red? 

The challenge: Write a poem addressed to your poem asking it to do something for you.

Here’s my unedited attempt:

 
dear poem

please fling your consonants
your double-meanings

please leap-frog your seed truth
over the form
out the pages
off the screen

please drop-kick my philandering lead strokes
clear over closest range

then

brush yourself off
scale the rock
descend the mountain

climb into waiting lap

and speak
 

::::

Part of Imperfect Prose Thursdays

God’s not dead
because I thought him/her so
like the holocaust nay-sayers
the animated moon walkers stabbing two inch toothpicks into three mile styrofoam craters unlikely green

God’s not dead
because we’ve lost some children
now witness to blinking nail bed growing in woman womb
delivering half-way placentas nine pound eleven ounce spirits through openings that for thirty years were smaller than bar soap bent to its circumference
making all labia-living believers

God’s not dead
because city does not become her/him
forgetting book promises cambodian valleys cave to hazel life
seven year pupils erasing invisibility lip-spoken not theirs
up climbing through arm of unlikely stranger
otherworldly kindness our universal language

:::

Part of Imperfect Prose Thursdays

A few of my words appeared in ‘print’ this past week.

A poem: A Prayer in catapult’s Arms are for Hugging issue

An interview: Wax Poetic in Comment

And my first profile in Sweetmama: Overhaul the Coveralls

Also, I entered a full-length poetry manuscript into a 1st book competition on Monday. Fingers and toes crossed. 

Have a happy weekend, Everyone!

:: This post appears on the After Hours blog today. 

Do one thing every day that scares you. - Eleanor Roosevelt, US diplomat & reformer (1884 – 1962)

It’s a quote I’ve been quick to recite but slow to practice. Except for last night when I stepped up to the microphone for the very first time and read some of my poetry aloud to a room of perfect strangers. Some of them fairly famous strangers. 

I was sure I read too fast. I stood at the podium wishing I’d edited just a little bit more. I fumbled over a line. My palms were sweaty.

I felt utterly alive. 

I sat down. Diane Tucker stood up. Her words flew. Lines: weighty, pressing, playful. Not one of them hitting the floor. It made me want to get up a hundred times more so I could read like her. One day. 

When was the last time you chose to do something that scared you?

by Joy Harjo

I’m not afraid of love
or its consequence of light.

It’s not easy to say this
or anything when my entrails
dangle between paradise
and fear.

I am ashamed
I never had the words
to carry a friend from her death
to the stars
correctly.

Or the words to keep
my people safe
from drought
or gunshot.

The stars who were created by words
are circling over this house
formed of calcium, of blood–

this house
in danger of being torn apart
by stones of fear.

If these words can do anything
I say bless this house
with stars.

Transfix us with love.

:::

This is the first poem we read on day one of my poetry workshop. I love the lines: “I say bless this house with stars.” They inspired a poem of my own which I’ll post soon.

Her fingers wrap around mine like a chord. Limbs darting up to tug at my linen, cotton billows, reaching out to declare: “You are mine.” Tenacious, yet layered with a heart like cream, Madeleine steals frames from faces in an instant. Translucent glass beads scattered about the floor save her from topples as she devours them with her finger folds. Snowy flesh. She is sitting better and better every day. At dawn each morning Daddy awakes to spend sleepy hours with her while I try and catch up from night waking. Enfolding one another in the day’s first light. This is our love.

This afternoon, nestled on the calm shore of Burnaby’s Deer Lake, I begin my first poetry class. I am both nervous and excited, after all it’s my first day of ’school.’

I’ve missed this feeling.

Star Song

by Luci Shaw, from WinterSong 146

We have been having
epiphanies, like suns,
all this year long.
And now, at its close
when the planets
are shining through frost,
radiance runs
like music in the bones,
and the heart keeps rising
at the sound of any song.

Old magic flowing
the calling of bells,
round high and clear,
flying and falling,
re-sounding the death knell
of our old year,
the new appearing
of Christ, our Morning Star.

Now burst!
all our bell throats.
Toll!
every clapper tongue.
Stun the still night!
Jesus himself gleams through
our high heart notes
(it is no fable).
It is he whose light glistens in each song sung
and in all of us
in the true coming
together again
at the stable: shepherds,
sages, his women and men,
common and faithful,
wealthy and wise,
with carillon hearts
and, suddenly,
stars in our eyes.

Flood

I woke to a voice within the room. perhaps.
The room itself: “You’re wasting this life
expecting disappointment.”
I packed my bag in the night
and peered in its leather belly
to count the essentials.
Nothing is essential.
To the east, the flood has begun.
Men call to each other on the water
for the comfort of voices.
Love surprises us.
It ends.

Eliza Griswold