Foreign Objects

Sometimes...

sometimes this life is a foreign object to me.

It's like something shiny but odd-looking,

that one comes across on the beach.

You pick it up

- two fingered because of the sand and the muck -

And notice right away that there's that one wicked sharp edge...

too sharp, in fact -

to smooth with the fat skin of your thumb.

But by using the edge of that soft old warm sweatshirt,

protection is gained as well as a glorious and unexpected sheen.

Thus pocketed, the mysterious find is safeguarded amongst agates, sand dollars, purple lint and torn grocery lists that you saved because the last item read:

"and I love you, my darling."

november 2010 © martha lee phelps

The Pine Reel

One Sierra mountain night,

just a few hours before dawn,

(after I had bid the dance hall adieu and

started the slow walk up the trail toward sleep)

there was this moment...

(how do you 
say, “silhouette” in your language?)

when the sky glowed as silver as smooth abalone, and

a solstice moon, through pale gauze clouds,

became back-light to four ancient pine trees.

I was stopped by the beauty of it all:

the perfect relief of form from darkness, and

the Milky Way’s delicate swath high overhead,

stretching across indigo velvet.

I was stopped and so awed that I held my breath

for fear that even the smallest
 disturbance
might wrinkle the night air around me.

And in that moment of reverence,

that one breathless point in time,

I heard an audible sigh from the evergreen quartet.

Mountain air pushed aside the wine,

poured across my face and stung my eyes

as, I stared willfully

into the shadows, and gained clarity just in time

to watch long lacy lower boughs of

those four ancient folk, lift and tremble

in the pearly light.

Back down the hill, music continued filling pockets of night.

Dreams wrapped themselves on blissful pipes,

strokes of bow against strings and laughing drums,

carried more songs of weary but willing revelers.

While out inside the silhouette,

out in the fierce breathe of dawn and miracle,

the trees had joined the reel!

Each strong branch began to bend and bow in rhythm.

What once was rigid, became supple.

What once lived rooted, was set free,
and with silent grace, 
their needled-skirt hems rose over the ground
and four solid trunks were revealed -

shaking off earth and swaying into a motion

that none upon the dance floor would witness,

yet was happening before my eyes with the surety of the sun’s arrival.

Life’s sharp joy pressed against my heart like a prayer,

like a song, and like one trembling, breathless dance
at the glowing edge of moonlight and dawn -

where all things are possible.

2010 © martha lee phelps

You Reading This, Be Ready

Starting here, what do you want to remember?
How sunlight creeps along a shining floor?
What scent of old wood hovers, what softened
sound from outside fills the air?
 
Will you ever bring a better gift for the world
than the breathing respect that you carry
wherever you go right now? Are you waiting
for time to show you some better thoughts?
 
When you turn around, starting here, lift this
new glimpse that you found; carry into evening
all that you want from this day. This interval you spent
reading or hearing this, keep it for life -
 
What can anyone give you greater than now,
starting here, right in this room, when you turn around?
 

~ William Stafford ~

 Photography by Martha Lee Phelps

The Inside Cusp

You went away on the inside cusp of springtime,
just after the last,
hard frost surprised us and killed the young tomato plants
that I had already put into the heavy damp earth.

The morning that you left,
the snow line pushed clear down
into the foothills one final time
as if to say, “Fuck your human calendar, I’ll do what I please,”

and it rained, cold and hard
for two full days -

soaking my heart in the grayness
of your new absence.

You went away after scoffing any fond farewell
or tender sigh -
refusing even the smallest nod.
And you knew you were hurting me, as
you slammed your suitcase abruptly.

It was easier to study your plane ticket
than look into my eyes.

And now it’s been a month.

And summer is drawing herself
like a chalk game on the neighborhood sidewalk

and the only evidence that spring ever was, is
the way the buds,
that once held themselves in tight protection against the chill,
are eagerly open and hungry for heat

and I can go for hours without remembering you.

The Inside Cusp © by Martha Lee Phelps

Life While-You-Wait

I rarely re-post things that others have sent via email on the same day or even in the same month, but this incredible poem really called out to me to "send it along." A large and warm "hat tip" to Joe Riley and his ongoing sharing through Panhala, and to the poet, of course -Wislawa Szymborska. The photos are from me. ~ Enjoy, mlp

Life While-You-Wait.
Performance without rehearsal.
Body without alterations.
Head without premeditation.

I know nothing of the role I play.
I only know it's mine. I can't exchange it.

I have to guess on the spot
just what this play's all about.

Ill-prepared for the privilege of living,
I can barely keep up with the pace that the action demands.
I improvise, although I loathe improvisation.
I trip at every step over my own ignorance.
I can't conceal my hayseed manners.
My instincts are for happy histrionics.
Stage fright makes excuses for me, which humiliate me more.
Extenuating circumstances strike me as cruel.

Words and impulses you can't take back,
stars you'll never get counted,
your character like a raincoat you button on the run ?
the pitiful results of all this unexpectedness.

If only I could just rehearse one Wednesday in advance,
or repeat a single Thursday that has passed!
But here comes Friday with a script I haven't seen.
Is it fair, I ask
(my voice a little hoarse,
since I couldn't even clear my throat offstage).

You'd be wrong to think that it's just a slapdash quiz
taken in makeshift accommodations. Oh no.
I'm standing on the set and I see how strong it is.
The props are surprisingly precise.
The machine rotating the stage has been around even longer.
The farthest galaxies have been turned on.
Oh no, there's no question, this must be the premiere.
And whatever I do
will become forever what I've done.
 
~ Wislawa Szymborska ~

No One On The Line

Billy Collins, a long time favorite poet of mine, is "famous for conversational, witty poems that welcome readers with humor but often slip into quirky, tender or profound observation on the everyday." This piece is a gem and particularly thought-provoking and apropos to some of the comments I occasionally hear regarding people's willingness staying in touch with their "friends."

Just as in the horror movies

when someone discovers that the phone calls

are coming from inside the house

so too, I realized   

that our tender overlapping

has been taking place only inside me.

All that sweetness, the love and desire—

it’s just been me dialing myself

then following the ringing to another room

to find no one on the line,

well, sometimes a little breathing

but more often than not, nothing.

To think that all this time—

which would include the boat rides,

the airport embraces, and all the drinks—

it’s been only me and the two telephones,

the one on the wall in the kitchen

and the extension in the darkened guest room upstairs.

"The Breather" by Billy Collins

"If the phone doesn't ring, it's me." Jimmy Buffet

 Photography and design by Martha Lee Phelps

What's Left

I used to wait for the flowers,
my pleasure reposed on them.
Now I like plants before they get to the blossom.
Leafy ones – foxgloves, comfrey, delphiniums –

fleshy tiers of strong leaves pushing up
into air grown daily lighter and more sheened
with bright dust like the eyeshadow
that tall young woman in the bookshop wears,
its shimmer and crumble on her white lids.

The washing sways on the line, the sparrows pull
at the heaps of drying weeds that I’ve left around.
Perhaps this is middle age.  Untidy, unfinished,
knowing there’ll never be time now to finish,
liking the plants – their strong lives –
not caring about flowers, sitting in weeds
to write things down, look at things,
watching the sway of shirts on the line,
the cloth filtering light.

I know more or less
how to live through my life now.
But I want to know how to live what’s left
with my eyes open and my hands open;
I want to stand at the door in the rain
listening, sniffing, gaping.
Fearful and joyous,
like an idiot before God.

by Kerrie Hardie

Only One Thing of Danger

Since yesterday's post was a bit by Neruda, I thought it fitting to offer a "bit" by Phelps which was inspired, in part, by the maestro.

“Look around — there's only one thing 
of danger for you here — poetry.” ~ Pablo Neruda 

I need to say this: Neruda makes it easy
to have something to fall back on.

His words (passionate,succulent) are dangerously 

delicious on my lips.

They pool up at the base of my throat
and trickle,
moist and salty

down, across the soft shadows of my belly and
rest there — quivering
in my navel

waiting and wanting to be sipped by you.

Easy too, because —
if I share his poems and (reading
between the lines) perchance you take offense

(at this boldness, brazen crossing of boundaries
drawn by hearts more easily confined)

I might smile and say with a shrug, “Well, that’s just Neruda.”

Then, I will quietly retreat
and stand behind maestro Pablo.

He knows I am feigning innocence
and he hears me
fervently whispering metaphors (fully ripened) that longingly

ache to be parted by your tongue.

Yes, Neruda makes it easy. 

by Martha Lee Phelps

Ode to Common Things
by Pablo Neruda

I have a crazy,
crazy love of things.
I like pliers,
and scissors.
I love
cups,
rings,
and bowls -
not to speak, or course,
of hats.
I love
all things,
not just
the grandest,
also
the
infinite-
ly
small -
thimbles,
spurs,
plates,
and flower vases.
Oh yes,
the planet
is sublime!
It’s full of pipes
weaving
hand-held
through tobacco smoke,
and keys
and salt shakers -
everything,
I mean,
that is made
by the hand of man, every little thing:
shapely shoes,
and fabric,
and each new
bloodless birth
of gold,
eyeglasses
carpenter’s nails,
brushes,
clocks, compasses,
coins, and the so-soft
softness of chairs.
Mankind has
built
oh so many
perfect
things!
Built them of wool
and of wood,
of glass and
of rope:
remarkable
tables,
ships, and stairways.
I love
all
things,
not because they are
passionate
or sweet-smelling
but because,
I don’t know,
because
this ocean is yours,
and mine;
these buttons
and wheels
and little
forgotten
treasures,
fans upon
whose feathers
love has scattered
its blossoms
glasses, knives and
scissors -
all bear
the trace
of someone’s fingers
on their handle or surface,
the trace of a distant hand
lost
in the depths of forgetfulness.
I pause in houses,
streets and
elevators
touching things,
identifying objects
that I secretly covet;
this one because it rings,
that one because
it’s as soft
as the softness of a woman’s hip,
that one there for its deep-sea color,
and that one for its velvet feel.
O irrevocable
river
of things:
no one can say
that I loved
only
fish,
or the plants of the jungle and the field,
that I loved
only
those things that leap and climb, desire, and survive.
It’s not true:
many things conspired
to tell me the whole story.
Not only did they touch me,
or my hand touched them:
they were
so close
that they were a part
of my being,
they were so alive with me
that they lived half my life
and will die half my death.

"Much More Than Just Sports"

Susan Casey said "Sports remain a great metaphor for life's more difficult lessons. It was through athletics that many of us first came to understand that fear can be tamed; that on a team the whole is more than the sum of its parts; and that the ability to be heroic lies, to a surprising degree, within." With this wisdom in mind, I'm honored to share the words of a guest poet this morning ~

Much More Than Just Sports

It is my escape.

My outlet.

My breakaway.

It is where I go, 

when it all becomes too much.

When insecurities come knocking

and school trips me up.

The adrenaline.

The energy.

The unimaginable passion.

That is where I turn.

Some call it sports,

but to me

it is so much more.

It is heart pounding

muscles tensing

mind quieting. 

It is running

jumping

kicking 

pushing

stepping

shoving

sweating.

When I start to play

all else fades.

And there I stand. 

The field 

The track

The pool

The gym

It all lays before me,

as I step out onto my stage.

It’s game time.

by Sarah Grace Cotton-Honeywell

"North Star"

“Make your plans. Make them now,”

urges the light filtering through the curtains.

“Move honey, just move,”

calls out the road map from the trunk of the car.

“What are you waiting for?”

Asks the able-bodied adventurer in my heart,

shaking her head with impatience

from waiting - 

too long, 

pack ready,

to move forward on the trail.

See that compass?

See the sun moving across the sky?

Another day is passing.

Another moonrise is certain.

Which vista will be your viewpoint?

Are you paying attention, my beloved?

Will you see from inside the same room

and through the same window?

Or will you step outside?

Will you

let Polaris be your marker?

It’s time to open the front door and walk away.

Go deep into the woods and 

find the path though the underbrush;

roam the edge

of the desert,

turn away from the sign posts reading “Wait

Until Tomorrow,”

cross the ocean

and make passage along roads 

so well-seasoned by memories

and movement 

that ghosts of ancient travelers 

watch over you in sleep

and never let you lose your waking way.

“Take yourself by the hand,” whispers my soul,

“Don’t wait, don’t wait,

dear god....

don’t wait.

Just seize your heart -

and go.”

"North Star" © 2010 and beyond by Martha Lee Phelps

It is Not Enough

It is not enough to know.
It is not enough to follow
the inward road conversing in secret.

It is not enough to see straight ahead,
to gaze at the unborn
thinking the silence belongs to you.

It is not enough to hear
even the tiniest edge of rain.

You must go to the place
where everything waits,
there, when you finally rest,
even one word will do,
one word or the palm of your hand
turning outward
in the gesture of gift.

And now we are truly afraid
to find the great silence
asking so little.

One word, one word only.



"It is Not Enough" 
from Where Many Rivers Meet © 1990, 2004 by David Whyte

An Ancient Story of Farewells

Your absence pierces me

In this world wired
and quivering with connection

to feel the pulse of solitude
and truly yearn for one who is absent,
is a small stanza
in a long and ancient story of farewells.

It tells of trying to contain
a dark and fertile passion
that rises, as a tide
turbulent — beautiful — unceasing,
across the vulnerable shoreline of our lives.

There is no denying it.

I imagine the wives of sailors long ago...
bidding their lovers good bye -
urgent embraces,
their bodies and lips
already kissed
by Loneliness, and
hearts aching with the impending void.

How could they breathe?
How...?

Did the pain
ease with each passing day?
or did bits of their souls, captured
on waves,
follow their beloved out to sea,
sometimes never to return?

Apart from you,
I am gasping for air.

Tide rising, your presence
haunts and presses into me.
Miles between us, nay — lifetimes between us -
yet still
I surrender to the longing

Collapsing into the arms of my ancestral sisters,
my soul is set with theirs,
out upon the water.

Remembering springtime in Wales

When I close my eyes,
I can see those childhood haunts
and an ocean with waves rolling back against
the shore we're standing on.

the sweet dreams I used to have
with the swell of tall grass about my head and body,
all the secret special hillsides that my heart took photos of,
and the scores of music I wrote 

while wildly running through pastureland after sheep....

A bryn noel
has rustled the papers
atop the desk in my mind,
and every favorite poem, prayer and lyric returns -
unforgotten.

If every ache inside I have felt, every spasm of longing
for my homeland,
were to take me back,
I should have been there the second that I left
and dwelt on until eternity
searching only for a love to share it all with.

Thus,
we would be complete,
and I would never again
close my eyes to see.


"Matti" by Martha Lee Phelps

A Lifetime Love Affair (Part III)

 
(In the form of a letter to my middle child, this is the final portion of a three part blog started on April 28, 2010 about expression of self and that which feeds our souls. The links will take you to some of my favorite pieces of poetry written by the highlighted poet. May you be "found" by something extraordinary in this offering. ~ mlp)

So, for years I’ve been telling you that one of the truly unique aspects of you playing the violin well -- will be that your violin will always be a friend to you. You can play it in joy; you can play it in sorrow. Through your fingers and abilities, your instrument may be an extension of your heart; it could be your only solace at times when lonely - and it might express love at times when words fail you. That’s been poetry for me, Sarah, both in the reading and the writing of it.
 
There’s been Rumi, Kabir and Whyte for honest prayer; Piercy, Hirschfield and Stafford for grounded awakening; Collins, Rilke, Merwin and Whitman for learning and reflection; Neruda and Kinnell for toe-curling passion, and my beloved Oliver for purpose, joy and deep humility.
 
There have been moments in my life when words failed me - whether in celebration, despair or even complete and utter boredom with living itself -  and I felt momentarily lost...until the arrival of a poem: my life’s version of a well-played violin.
 
Last fall when your brother was diagnosed with cancer, poetry from unexpected places and unknown poets arrived for me like small life rings from the universe. It was as if, in the absence of an answer to my pleading “why?” - God tossed out vessels of comfort -- in a form that would reach my heart -- to say, “There is no answer that will suffice, but let these words of reflection remind you that all will be well.”
 
"September Meditation" by Burton D. Carley
I do not know if the seasons remember their history or if the days and
nights by which we count time remember their own passing.
I do not know if the oak tree remembers its planting or if the pine
remembers its slow climb toward sun and stars.
I do not know if the squirrel remembers last fall's gathering or if the
bluejay remembers the meaning of snow.
I do not know if the air remembers September
 or if the night remembers the moon.
I do not know if the earth remembers the flowers from last spring or if
the evergreen remembers that it shall stay so.
Perhaps that is the reason for our births -- to be the memory for creation.
Perhaps salvation is something very different than anyone ever expected.
Perhaps this will be the only question we will have to answer:
"What can you tell me about September?"

Praying

It doesn't have to be
the blue iris, it could be
weeds in a vacant lot, or a few
small stones; just
pay attention, then patch

a few words together and don't try
to make them elaborate, this isn't
a contest but the doorway

into thanks, and a silence in which
another voice may speak.

~ Mary Oliver ~

So, Sarah Grace, this whole rambling post started as the result of an argument we had about...a poem. It was or rather, is, a poem written by the other of my all time favorites, e e cummings. I thought I knew which cummings piece was my most beloved. I was certain for over twenty years, that “i carry your heart” was THE one. But then a few months ago quite by accident, I found the very poem that I offered you to take to your English class on Wednesday morning. 

You didn't want to.

Thank you for reminding me how much I love this art form and why; thanks too for giving me a chance to recall my dearest friends and their wisdom, and for inspiring me to tell you a story that might come in handy some day. Lastly, my love, thank you for reminding me that it is the poem that finds us, and only when the time is right...

~ I love you, Mom

"let it go"


let it go - the
smashed word broken
open vow or
the oath cracked length
wise - let it go it
was sworn to
go

let them go - the
truthful liars and
the false fair friends
and the boths and
neithers - you must let them go they
were born
to go

let all go - the
big small middling
tall bigger really
the biggest and all
things - let all go
dear

so comes love

~ e. e. cummings ~

A Lifetime Love Affair (Part II)

(This is the second installment of a lengthy post. Part I was published on April 28.)

If your eyes were not the color of the moon,
of a day full of clay, and work, and fire,
if even held-in you did not move in agile grace like the air,
if you were not an amber week,

not the yellow moment
when autumn climbs up through the vines;
if you were not that bread the fragrant moon
kneads, sprinkling its flour across the sky,

oh, my dearest, I would not love you so!
But when I hold you I hold everything that is--
sand, time, the tree of the rain,

everything is alive so that I can be alive:
without moving I can see it all:
in your life I see everything that lives.         ~Pablo Neruda


My first book of Pablo Neruda's poems were given to me on my eighteenth birthday. I had little life experience to filter his exquisite writing through. Roger Housden says in the opening of his book, Ten Poems to Change Your Life, that good poetry has the power to start a fire in your life, and I think that’s what happened for me with Neruda. I mean, I had already been exposed to good poetry. But it had all come to me at someone else’s behest. With the arrival of Neruda’s love sonnets and odes, I now began seeking new poems and their writers on my own accord. A fire had been lit within me that felt so marvelously untamed and warm, I wanted to stoke the flame with more fuel.

Fortunately, an English major in college is in the perfect spot for foraging. Barbara Clark-Mossberg gave me an education in the fireside poets and the likes of Emerson, Whitman, Dickinson, Melville and Thoreau that had my mind and senses overflowing. Ed Coleman, my beloved adviser, baptized me in the African American poets: Gwendolyn Brooks, Paul Lawrence Dunbar, Claude McKay, Langston Hughes, Nikki Giovanni and others found their way into my marrow. Gloria Johnson stood, with her open Riverside collection of Shakespeare's plays and sonnets, and read aloud in class in lilting iambic pentameter that made perfect sense - nearly all the time! I read, listened to and wrote prose and poetry in an environment that inspired more exploration and discovery than I had previously known. This is, of course, one of the beautiful aspects of going to college and studying what you are passionate about. There is plenty of encouraging support around you.

When I graduated, with a bachelor’s degree in English and minors in creative writing and folklore and ethnic studies, I began to make my way toward being a teacher. I hadn’t forgotten that my ten-year old self had a different career goal, but I figured that instilling a love for literature, poetry and writing in children would be a worthy way to make a difference in the world. And it did. Poetry study in my LA classes were NOTHING like what I had encountered in high school. We learned the language, read contemporary works, listened to rock, pop and rap music, threw out the rule books, wrote constantly, shared daily - and had fun. Imagine that?

At home, in my carefree life before motherhood, poetry was present daily. Your dad wooed me in fairly romantic fashion with a piece called “A Late Aubade” by Richard Wilbur, not long after I met him - 

You could be sitting now in a carrel

Turning some liver-spotted page,

Or rising in an elevator-cage

Toward Ladies' Apparel.

You could be planting a raucous bed

Of salvia, in rubber gloves,

Or lunching through a screed of someone's loves

With pitying head.

Or making some unhappy setter

Heel, or listening to a bleak

Lecture on Schoenberg's serial technique.

Isn't this better?

Think of all the time you are not

Wasting, and would not care to waste,

Such things, thank God, not being to your taste.

Think what a lot

Of time, by woman's reckoning,

You've saved, and so may spend on this,

You who had rather lie in bed and kiss

Than anything.

It's almost noon, you say? 
If so,
Time flies, and I need not rehearse

The rosebuds-theme of centuries of verse.

If you mustgo,

Wait for a while, then slip downstairs

And bring us up some chilled white wine,

And some blue cheese, and crackers, and some fine

Ruddy-skinned pears.


...and perhaps this poem even had something to do with why I fell in love with him? I certainly remember the sound of his voice as he read to me, as well as the light in the room and the texture of the ripe pear he had placed gently in my hand.

You see, Sarah, the right poem can change not only the way you see yourself, but it can change the way you see the world. At the least, it entertains us with images and rhythm, at the most though -- it gives us permission, welcomes forgiveness, dares us to push pass the edges of the safety net that we live so much of life within and sustains us when the of life territory feels new, scary, raw and wild.

By the time your older brother had arrived, a decade after Neruda was born into my heart, I had come to realize that one of the biggest reasons I loved poetry so very very much, was because the truly gifted poets - somehow, some -inexplicable- how, seemed to be able to put into words my exact feelings about certain things and experiences - when even I could not. How was this possible? I couldn’t explain it, but felt it deeply and truly. 



(End of Part II)