Showing posts with label Weather. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Weather. Show all posts

Sunday, March 17, 2024

Spring incantation

oh, these needles of rain 
the skies are full of surprises

my only choice of speech
is a quiet, topographical melody 

for I bring us to forsythia
and crocus, tulip, and daffodil

a readying redbud now, then
a promise of hellebore and more 
__________
Pic: A redbud getting ready by the Red Cedar.

Wednesday, March 13, 2024

companion song

desire turning into decision 
at once terrifying, free
I am moved

into the path of turning knives
their rhythms familiar
I am here

afraid of turning the page
my mind un-scrolling
I am opened

like a hinge into the world
I've been here before--
I return once more
_____________________
Pic: Max and Huck, my writing companions, snoozing in the sunshine.

Monday, March 11, 2024

a private communion

I dream of tangerines
sweet with summer
how I will wait 

for the right moment  
to touch, peel them 
with reverence

their flesh like that
of a new beloved
still secret

our meeting--kisses 
sluicing nectarine 
in blessing 
________________________
Pic: Geese on the banks of the Red Cedar. I thought there was something very balletic about their pose...

Sunday, March 10, 2024

spring forward anyway

We woke up to snow on the ground, but it's Spring in my heart anyway.

Big A wimped out because it was cold and windy, but I took a long walk in the snow anyway.

It's too early to start the garden like I want to, but I started an array of herbs in planters indoors anyway.

Pic: Basil, thyme, rosemary, and mint growing in the solarium upstairs (the blue and red pots). Our quirky old house has lots of inconveniences, but its passive solar design means there's lots of light. I might as well use it for something good.

Saturday, March 09, 2024

scenic/cynic

When I leave this country of fog
my bags of salt fall into the river
carried away like tears
*
breezes blow out birthday candles
whistle through my aching head
lift thoughts like kites
*
every day I make my body stronger
it will build a city, knock out bullies
I dream as fast as I can 
_____________________

Pic: The Red Cedar behind L's house. L will be gone for a month, so we had an extra long walk-and-talk this week.

Thursday, March 07, 2024

"to everything there is a season..."

I spend hours every week caring for my plants in our indoor tea garden. It's a narrow space, but since it runs the length of our great room, the greenery and light lift me up every time I pass through. 

But... when I decide to sit in there to actually drink a cup of tea, I find that instead of experiencing calm and enjoying the space as it is, my eyes are darting around to check for errant dirt or for yellowing and browning leaves to pull, and other things to fix or move.

This is silly. It's a garden, there'll always be dead leaves and dirt and things to do. My new exercise is to enjoy the space without worrying about perfecting things. I lit the candle L gave me (lavender and neroli), breathed in the scent of my hyacinths budding, and marveled at the begonias blooming for the sixth year in a row. 

There's gunk on the bird pedestal under the small cachepot... but I'll clean it in the time allotted to cleaning. This is not that time.   

Pic: Tablescape with plants, flowers, and candle.

Wednesday, March 06, 2024

upcoming

"A book must be an axe for the frozen sea inside us." 
Kafka in a letter to Oskar Pollak 

As it happens: 
I have some books
I have at least two axes
I have the frozen sea
so I have all 3/3
*
the day is cloud-colored
my hair is in my eyes
I travel inside the love 
I have built for you
where it is windy
*
but this time tomorrow
Spring will be closer
these shoots coming up
groping their way into 
the air, would agree 
________________
Pic: Tulips (I think) coming up... Not my garden (I wish). From a quick walk to MSU this morning.

Tuesday, March 05, 2024

a koan noting nothing

look, I said to the sky
my yearning is born 
in the wrong time

these hands that held
books and babies 
now hold air 

even falling like beauty 
this light is silent
oh, cold god  
___________________
Notes: I like knowing "nothing" was pronounced "noting" in Elizabethan English. The "nothing" itself didn't come from emptiness but from a very long 12-hour (14 with the commute) work day.

Pic: The REDress Project by Jaime Black-Morsette at MSU. From my walk yesterday.

Sunday, March 03, 2024

"take a hike," they said

Well, actually no one did. But it has become a tradition to go on a hike before my birthday. Last year we went to the Ledges on a very snowy day. This year I couldn't have asked for a better day for my pre-birthday hike! It was such a balmy 60+ degrees and sunshiny and at some point, I had to slip my arms out of my long-sleeved shirt and wore the sleeves dangling like an extra pair of arms. 

Burchfield Park--new to me--was an easy eight-mile loop and scenic all the way through.

Pic: Big A my navigator + water and snack carrier ahead of me. 

Saturday, March 02, 2024

just killing time/filling the silence

mothers look away from me now
seconds abscond with sense 
in glissandos of angst

dreams pour out their sure poison 
I play it safe and then pretend 
--what? I don't understand

watching homes bloom in flame
and wart and scab into craters 
--I am an earnest surveyor

of everything left unsaid, noting
the news burns the day when 
it could be lit up with peace 
_____________________________

Note: Someday I will write a poem about Aaron Bushnell, but this is not it.
Pic: A mallard couple by themselves... they took to the water as we neared and I felt bad for disturbing their peace. Baker Woods Bog with L and T.

Thursday, February 29, 2024

Leap day: local, lowkey leisure

I woke up from a dream in which the kids and I were traveling with bestie KB... but then I got separated from them while lining up for an airport shuttle. I couldn't see them anymore, but I remember shouting over the crowd, "K, do you have my kids?" And she shouted back "yeah!" And then I felt calmer in the dream and as I woke up. I felt even calmer after I texted KB and asked her to check in on my kids if anything should happen to me. And she promised she would but added in characteristic KB fashion: "And FFS, Maya, please don’t die!!!" I'm not planning to!

I did a ton of work all morning from the moment Nu left for school. In the afternoon, I felt like a lady of leisure from a long time ago, or perhaps a lady of leisure in my future retirement. 

It was cold but sunshiny today, so I walked over to our local public radio station to help pack reading-literacy kits. It was repetitive assembly-line work and nicely freed up my head from extraneous thoughts--because you had to stay focused to get it right.

Then I walked home again with a nice long detour to finish the album I was listening to. 

I stopped by L's for a chat and to pick up the lemons I had asked to borrow from her... and then headed home for dinner with the fam.  

Sounds boring, but it was kind of blissful. 

Pic: Reading kit assembly station.

Wednesday, February 28, 2024

Hello, it is me I'm looking for

Today was mostly spent in what my dad would call a "funk." But I'm on my winter break and I'll funk if I want to.

I still managed to renew my Driver's License, arrange catering for a campus event next week, and finalize the speaker series for Women's History Month. 

I feel sad and helpless, and I told Big A that I was going to take my emergency prescription medication, but I didn't (I'm always "saving" it in case I have I bigger crisis). I drank a lot of tea instead, clung to him like a baby monkey, and then rallied to make up and make an amazing dinner (rice with arugula, five-color veggies + beans braised with miso, sesame oil, and nori). 

And then as a reward, I found birthday cards in the mail! They were such a sweet surprise and such a cheery pick-me-up.

Pic: Also immensely cheering, my fuzzy welcome committee. Max and Huck always pop up to say hello as I unlock the back door.

Tuesday, February 27, 2024

in solidarity

Overwhelmed by the sacrifice of Aaron Bushnell, which I had barely begun to process yesterday.

 Heartbroken/Awestruck. 

What an empathetic, sincere, radical, and idealistic soul... What a lesson in being true to his conscience and his long history of mutual aid. He had recently been deployed to Israel as a U.S. airman, and I want to question why we're getting involved in the fighting rather than the peacemaking too.

Speaking of which, nearly 100,000 people in Michigan voted "uncommitted" today to challenge U.S. complicity in the Palestinian genocide... the goal had been to get 10K votes. I dislike how the media has painted this as an "Arab-American and Muslim" issue when it's really a humanitarian issue. So yes, Dearborn, which has a large Arab-American population, voted approx. 75% uncommitted, but Washtenaw, which has no significant Arab-American presence, also voted approx. 25% uncommitted. I don't have numbers for Ingham where Big A, At, and I voted. The "Listen to Michigan" campaign was started just about three weeks ago, so this is impressive.

Aaron Bushnell's sacrifice and the uncommitted votes are also a hopeful sign of humanitarian solidarity and moral clarity for me. It is difficult to go on day after day knowing we're actively vetoing ceasefires and sending arms to kill civilians but having to act like everything is normal.

Pic: I was at work today, and wanted to get a closeup of the "touchstone" LK made me--it is actually beautifully planed wood with copper insets that are almost like constellations. But then I got a bit distracted by the sunlight filtering through my office plants. The "toys" are a miniature Freedom Rider bus that KB gave me from her visit to the Legacy Museum and an auto-rickshaw my mom gave me after Nu and I had an adventure in one last year. 

Thursday, February 22, 2024

I am not alone

I live for the broad roofs
of wide skies lately
I'm thinking of making up 
my own cosmology

a sister sun, a mother moon
I'll urge on a webbing,
make belonging a whole world 
build like an animal

trusting one, another, and another 
where all of us are lost
--and it's okay and it's expected 
as everywhere is safe

kindness a patina to shine on  
the knots of this world
this goddamned beautiful world 
winding down slowly

surely, but still with so many
of those we love here...
still here, so I release to air
the ones who 

have been handfuls of sawdust
and ash
to live on as kin and stardust
everywhere 
_______________________________
Pic: Sunset today over the Maple on my way home. 

Tuesday, February 20, 2024

The Sun: a poem and a pic

Mary Oliver: The Sun
Have you ever seen
anything
in your life
more wonderful
than the way the sun,
every evening,
relaxed and easy,
floats toward the horizon
and into the clouds or the hills,
or the rumpled sea,
and is gone–
and how it slides again
out of the blackness,
every morning,
on the other side of the world,
like a red flower...

Full poem here: http://www.phys.unm.edu/~tw/fas/yits/archive/oliver_thesun.html 
Pic: Sunset on my way home. Despite everything, the beauty of our world is just so breathtaking...

Monday, February 19, 2024

updates

Good:  Big A's test results came back--nothing terrifying to report.
But:     The original symptoms persist. 
*
Good:  My stretch of overwork and late work evenings is mostly over.
But:     This week I scheduled two more late work evenings for March.
*
Good:   Participating in a teach-in panel on Gaza with the college YDSA in mid-March.
But:      Worrying about bothsideism from fellow-panelists.
*
[Pic] 
Good:    Big A, Huck, Max, and me on a post-dinner walk with a fabulous sunset ahead of us.
 But:     Don't look too closely at Big A's left hand. Ha.

Saturday, February 17, 2024

the first cousin to die

for Sunil

I'm always eight, you're always fourteen
in the long time ago that lasts forever 
I know now I'll never see you again

you have other people to haunt and anyway
 they probably want to hang with you--
the dad you lost at two, your young uncle...

all those men in your family who died young
it's why your mother, grandmother, sister 
 dote on you, as if to try to keep you forever 

I wondered how you had more friends than books
I confused you too--I remember when you 
congratulated me about my school exams, 

and seemed so confused why it was important...
 I mean--you were so rich you didn't have to work
--and I don't think you did even at 40, right?

but you were always kind... if a bit ganja-fueled 
when a single kindness could keep me happy
for days. I wonder at my dad saying

I shouldn't be alone with you... I feel you loved 
my gentle dad, wished he were yours
in the sheerness of the childhood--

which brightened us up... now only if this end
too could lift us up... instead it sets us adrift... 
as if to warn us we're going... extinct 
_________________________________________

Pic: An icy, windy day--but oh, such brilliantly blue, sunshiny skies. A long walk with Big A to the MSU Baseball stadium. 

Friday, February 16, 2024

what we do

the sky is full of bright 
holes, so whatever falls
from  them  is starry-- 
starting from distance 
but  now  lodged here

like empathy turned
into  a fact,  eternal
and  then carefully
teaching us to crest 
in  announcements

on  days  when  our
world seems ready to 
ignite, we can shout:
"I love you so much"
in a room of strangers
_________________________________

Pic: Max and Nu in yesterday's surprise snow. 

Thursday, February 15, 2024

in every register

my thoughts grow still 
in a landscape slowing
with  sleep, reckoning
now embalms the day

today  I  have  filled
my  heart  again  and 
again... today I willed
my soul to feel beauty 

for on learning in me 
the enduring vapor 
of stars; the brilliant 
 brevities of  flowers

I choose from the new
the needed next step... 
I will see the end arrive
still speaking only love 
_____________

Pic: Saying goodbye to Huckie and Maxie is the toughest part of my morning.

Tuesday, February 13, 2024

an unhappy anniversary

That was quick... I guess it was just last year that there was an active shooter on the MSU campus with three students shot dead and five more critically injured (they all survived, thankfully). And this was on the heels of a scare and lockdown at Nu's high school just the week before.

The local radio station has carried stories about the anniversary all day with some segments on national radio too.

I remember being triggered by sirens two weeks later, but that seems to have faded now. What a difference a year makes. And it's amazing all the rubbish my human brain can grow used to and normalize. 

Pic: MSU students working on a commemorative message at the 'spirit rock' on Sunday.

Spring incantation

oh, these needles of rain  the skies are full of surprises my only choice of speech is a quiet, topographical melody  for I bring us to fors...