Revisionist

I am looking at previous poems.  It is fun to read words written and recollect their place in my body and mind.  Some poems get a little tweaking as I collect them with companions for a manuscript – change the title, shorten a line to fit a publication page size.  Some verses get an all-done stamp and remain unchanged.  I am a currently a poet revisionist.

Dictionary.com defines the common noun revisionist.
1.  an advocate of revision, especially of some political or religious doctrine.
2.  a reviser.
3.  any advocate of doctrines, theories, or practices that depart from established authority or doctrine.

My older poems sometimes feel like lessons I needed.  I’ve heard it said that mantras passed from ancient teachers to students were expected to reveal their meaning over time to the pupil.  What a beautiful concept with a requisite for patience.  Poetry can be that kind of hymn as well, opening itself over time after having been written or read.

I read The Heart of Yoga by T.K.V. Desikachar several months ago.  I recorded notes in my journal that I wanted to study further.  One such note, a quote from The Yoga Sutras of Patanjali, reads “True freedom is a state in which our actions do not bring repentance or regret.”  Initially I thought, “Awesome. If I meditate enough and become so present in the present I will make no mistakes and have no misgivings because I will be totally rocking the Now.”  Time has passed since that indulgent thought.   My revisionist thought today says, “Mistake-free living?  Probably not.” 

Take this morning.  I awoke to George Michael singing “Freedom ‘90” (thank you iPhone alarm clock).  I listlessly lay there and listened.  I lamented staying up late and asserted that if I could try Sunday night again I would sleep sooner and avoid feeling tired.  I listened.

It occurred to me while the teen-throb hottie of the 1990’s crooned his tune that misgiving-free living is rather unlikely.  Perhaps freedom could also be letting go of yesterday so fully that is doesn’t leak into today.  After making amends where possible understand the past’s unchangeable nature and release yesterday with its mistakes.  There is not time travel for the revisionist no matter how much pondering is proffered.  Stewing and wishing and wondering just distract us from today.  As I look back at past poems I offer them to myself new and sometimes scrap one that doesn’t sound right anymore.

Reviser

Supplant chapters that hurt as life offered and ate them

sour spears stomach swallowed, slicing clean in two

holy half that is not and half that is you, wishing

Wishing some things simply weren’t true will not aid

the drink you made of sour grapes and shared

your blood then and now, wondering

Wondering if beings could have been different, better

deliberation of long ago letter wastes today’s time

true libation in the current cup.  Drink.

Countdown

The days of the 2011-2012 school year are dwindling away.  The marathon that is the weeks from spring break to the last day of school is amazing.  Seems we have to celebrate the end of everything – clubs, classes, sports seasons – with some kind of cake or certificate or both.  There are summer plans and days of reading just for pleasure being anticipated.  My kids have started a countdown. 

The noun countdown is defined at dictionary.com
1.  the backward counting in fixed time units from the initiation of a project, as a rocket launch, with the moment of firing designated zero.
2.  the final preparations made during this period.
3.  a period of increasing activity, tension, and anxiety, as before a deadline.

How often do we employ this action in our lives, marking the time until the end of what we are doing?  Wading through the increased activity to get everything finished?  Unlike waiting for a rocket to launch, we are waiting for something to reach completion.  It may be one work day, one family meal, the week before a wedding, a final exam, a project.  It can be exciting to see something come to fruition but I’d sure like to skip the rise in tension and anxiety!  Sometimes we just want some certain thing to be over and done. 

Waking to Monday having flurried through every minute of the weekend, I am tired and my brain does not want to write a poem today.  But I gave myself five more minutes to get started five minutes ago and they passed as I knew they would. 

Backward Counting

FIVE more minutes, the eternal cry

of the mother who read proper through

proffered psychology texts tends to provide

appropriate transition for her youth before saying goodbye

FOUR ounces of milk measured means

mini muffins will bake to tiny tasty tantalizing

trickster treats for teeny tots who haven’t yet tasted

icing, sticky sweet substance tendering true sugar desire

THREE fingers finding vertical

from a tight fist allowing everyone time

to calm down and find their places before something

hits the fan and sprays foul sounding syllables to the sky

TWO tick tock hours from dinner

to bed where each sleepy head will become

quiet and still, teetering into tardy nighttime trances

the day passed in such speed spinning tales to tell tomorrow

ONE more minute the eternal yen

of any playtime finding its end, looking ahead

to departing friends and the fun that follows them away

leaving senses conjecturing, in result of the race what was won

ZERO

Story

The present results from the passing of all the moments lived up to this one.  Accumulated events, places, people, emotions, physical states, actions and reactions interlace to form our today.  Sometimes we share bits and pieces of our history – the funny, the sad, the poignant, the educational.  Our story can be told for relationship building, amusement, for healing, for self-actualization, for memorialization.

The noun story has ten entries at dictionary.com.  The following three pertain to my thoughts today.
1.  a narrative, either true or fictitious, in prose or verse, designed to interest, amuse, or instruct the hearer or reader; tale
6.  a narration of the events in the life of a person or the existence of a thing, or such events as a subject for narration
10.  (obsolete)  history

I often work to remind myself not to get stuck in my story, not to let where I have been define me so deeply that I don’t see the options in where I am.  We are not confined by our story but flowing through it.  Embracing having arrived where we are as a result of our history is crucial.  But we might try not to be defined by the events so unchangingly that we cling to the players and happenings we did not choose.  Letting go of what we did choose that did not serve us well is also important!

How we put the parts of our story together can be complicated and incomplete.  How we assume the story of others can be even more so.  I am taken aback by how much our society is want to say, “I know his/her story.  I saw a photo. I read his/her job title.  I met his/her spouse.  I went to school with him/her.  I know where he/she lives.  I know how he/she voted.”  Is any of that really enough for us to fill in the existence of a person?

Her Story

If she writes you a story
will you tell her you love her, as blood
ink sheds soft scribbles each moon
over pure white thought

Shall the tale be about you
or her, or us, or people we have known
who have grown, more or less
by times retelling into heroes

Whose language shall she chant
slang, rhythm, or chime of clock telling
time passing rhyme after rhyme
life giving open pelvis

If you love the story
does it belong to you, will every story
softly laced or wryly written after loving
become part of your body

Lost after figure fails, when lyrics reside
in legend, if she never fathoms the fairytale
will it cease to be but afterbirth bits
bright glass gravel

Picking up shards or clearing the way
left to say by the eyes (which often tell lies)
arranging a trap of tacks or cleaning them up
pointedly identical in a picture

Unwitting accomplice to tale’s telling
body verses, arrows, heart and asps dwelling
she speaks and perhaps keeps herself
weaving yarn one point at a time

Born

Being born is no choice on the part of the creature being birthed.  Tab A, slot B, gametes getting together – I saw the facts-of-life film strip flip from frame to frame in 1979.  Nine months later, in the case of humans, a new being endures a squished, screaming, shocking, naked arrival.  Once the cord is cut the journey begins.  We mark the day of our arrival, our birthday.

The first entry at dictionary.com defines born as “brought forth by birth.”

Today is my birthday.  In the early hours of an April morning in 1969 my own mother delivered me, her first baby, into the world.  I am blessed to have been born from two people who loved me and considered providing a home for me a priority.  Like all people on earth, I suspect we were not perfect.  But we three moved forward through my baby days with caring and attention to ourselves as a little family.  At least, that’s how I imagine it to be as I don’t really remember.  I slept through most of it.  But pictures look like that.  I was clean (meaning I got the baths I needed), chubby (meaning I got the food I needed), and cutely dressed (meaning I had grandmothers who could sew and dote on me).  In photographic moments I smiled and drooled and learned to walk and made messes and somehow meandered my way into adulthood in the watchful world of my family.

From today’s birthday perch in grown-up land, here’s what I know for sure.  We don’t pick where or when we are born.  We get no choice as to whom we are born but we changed their lives!  Cake and a pretty party dress are always fun for a birthday.  After 40, the sound of my age number is somewhat shocking and always seems worse than the body I’m actually living in.  Having my own kids makes me appreciate my own childhood and sometimes I feel I should call my parents to apologize for doing to them something my kids are doing to me that I am certain I perpetrated as well!  It feels warm and special to be wished, “Happy Birthday!”  Birthdays make you think about being born, being alive, being who you are in the spot you are and the places you have passed on the way.          

Each Day Somebody is Born

Celebrate the belly day that dawned, maybe full of cake

sticky, uncertain breath inhaled wonder of a windy wish

gifts, toys or hugs from boys file into future picture days

thousands of ways to receive time, tickling tiny toes, ten

counted over and over again, miracle matched by places

feet finally find standing tall and faces walking into years

knitting yarns and yielding yard sticks deep lined with pen

marking then how much we have, grown, gathered, sown

single day stopping spot where you want on your birthday

simply to continue, being born, hoping it all bakes sweet.

Kid

Morning is different today.  School is out for spring break.  All three of my children are enrolled in school and thereby taking a week off.  This is the first year in a decade that I have not had a younger-than-school-age child at home.  A funny feeling descended when I awoke and realized every kid in my house was asleep.

Dictionary.com’s first entry under the noun kid offers the meaning as “informal for a child or young person.”

Because none of my offspring was awake no one needed me for anything right away.  I opened my eyes and thought, “What do I want to do right now?  Is there some thing I should do?”  My natural instinct turns to what my children need from me first thing.  Nothing immediately came to mind today.  No tardy bells beckoned.  No young, empty stomachs churned for food.  I decided to roll onto my back and remain there for a few minutes listening to the birds.  Then I heard a toilet flush.  I waited.  Wondered.  Whichever kid had nature’s call took care of their business and went back to bed.  It was a gift to them and me!

Over the thirty minutes that followed everyone awoke.  We wandered to breakfast at about 8:00, made muffins, and munched the meal  away in our pajamas.  Awesome.  We kissed our hard-working husband/daddy off to his office.  We watched some morning TV, a rare treat, and looked forward to a day of relaxing.  Kid one, kid two, kid three and me.

Every day of spring break is not as empty of places to be and things to see as today.  We have some school projects to work on and meals and laundry will need to be addressed.  But what a blessing to have this day to be and do nothing in particular, to feel some space in a new skin for me - a mother of all school aged children.

Offspring

When everyone is young they take so much

space for growing and sounding cords, screams

whimpers, dreams wrapped in tears, time to need

no more but baby birds call, who has been here

all this time waiting to be heard amidst the joys

noise, learning, toys, breaking bones and braces

finding that slowly each person’s young slip

beneath covers that rise and fall with breath

a kid becomes grown able to be alone a moment

in the night of rest to awaken slowly, surely

to a spring dawn of still child mine but farther

along a path that leads away from mother want.