Seeking Late, But Not Too Late

So already, it's National Poetry Month! Get ready for poetry-focused blog posts in the weeks ahead.

Not that poetry and I have been on easy terms of late. For many months, I've behaved like an unrequited, ambivalent lover who's been too awed, humbled, and, yes, absent to write the love letters she's claimed to have wanted to send. If she had written, her beloved might have responded with waves of love--and great poems!

In mid-March, my poetry-writing group met at my house. For the second straight meeting, I had no poem of my own to read. The best I could muster was a fruit salad.

But our meetings always begin with the hostess's sharing a poem. Whatever blank pages and rightfully abandoned fragments were the sum of my scarce poetic efforts--really, my efforts to write anything at all--I was certain days before our meeting that I wanted to read Louise Glück's "Nest" to the group. 

I share the whole poem with you here 

• because it's hard to find it online in its entirety; 
• because I want you to have the chance to read--and love--the whole poem, though I won't discuss all of it; and 
• because I've purchased so many copies of Vita Nova over the years to give as gifts that I hope Glück would regard my quoting her entire poem as an act of reverent gratitude and appreciation, not theft or disrespect.

Here it is:

"Make For" by Scott Ketcham

A bird was making its nest.
In the dream, I watched it closely:
in my life, I was trying to be
a witness not a theorist.

The place you begin doesn't 
   determine
the place you end: the bird

took what it found in the yard,
its base materials, nervously
scanning the bare yard in early 
   spring;
in debris by the south wall 
   pushing
a few twigs with its beak.

Image
of loneliness: the small creature
coming up with nothing. Then
dry twigs. Carrying, one by one,
the twigs to the hideout.
Which is all it was then.

It took what there was:
the available material. Spirit 
wasn't enough.

And then it wove like the first Penelope
but toward a different end.
How did it weave? It weaved,
carefully but hopelessly, the few twigs
with any suppleness,
any flexibility,
choosing these over the brittle, the recalcitrant.

Early spring, late desolation.
The bird circled the bare yard making
efforts to survive 
on what remained to it.

It had its task:
to imagine the future. Steadily flying around,
patiently bearing small twigs to the solitude
of the exposed tree in the steady coldness
of the outside world.

I had nothing to build with.
It was winter; I couldn't imagine
anything but the past. I couldn't even
imagine the past, if it came to that.

And I didn't know how I came there.
Everyone else much farther along.
I was back at the beginning
at a time in life when we can't remember beginnings.

The bird 
collected twigs in the apple tree, relating
each addition to existing mass.
But when was there suddenly mass?

It took what it found after the others
were finished.
The same materials--why should it matter 
to be finished last? The same materials, the same 
limited good. Brown twigs, 
broken and fallen. And in one,
a length of yellow wool.

Then it was spring, and I was inexplicably happy.
I knew where I was: on Broadway with my bag of groceries.
Spring fruit in the stores: first
cherries at Formaggio. Forsythia
beginning.

First I was at peace.
Then I was contented, satisfied.
And then flashes of joy.
And the season changed--for all of us, 
of course.

And as I peered out my mind grew sharper.
And I remember accurately
the sequence of my responses,
my eyes fixing on each thing
from the shelter of the hidden self:

first, I love it.
Then, I can use it.**

I hadn't reread "Nest" before deciding it was the poem wanted to read. But while I was reading it aloud to the group, I knew why I'd chosen it: I was the "I" in the poem, the speaker who eventually becomes one with the bird, the aspiring poetry reader and writer "coming up with nothing," the one "back at the beginning" who "had nothing to build with," the one amassing "carefully but hopelessly" the twigs and sticks that others had passed over, the one destined to be "finished last."

Forget the poem's happy ending: I've yet to come across forsythia***  this spring, and I am not frothing with joy on this April 2. But oh, is it comforting to stand in the company of that speaker/bird in the earlier stanzas! That's one of the great gifts of really good poetry--the way it permits us to stand in company--emotional, intellectual, spiritual, even physical--and in so doing significantly eradicates our existential loneliness and despair. Especially at those moments when we feel that "For this, for everything, we are out of tune,**** great poems remind us of ". . . [our] place/In the family of things."*****

I have written only one blog post since 2019 began, and that on the precipitous occasion of the death of a good friend in mid-January. By then, deep sadness and worry were dominating my emotional landscape, I was already doubting that I had anything to say, and I was certainly doubting that I could add any truth or beauty to the world. Poetry--others' poetry--and music helped me navigate that moment, though. 

Not a coincidence I bought these notecards?

When my parents finally--thankfully--agreed in late January to go into assisted living, moving them became my focus. Not the stuff of poetry; just the stuff of being a daughter of nonagenarian parents. I was glad to be helping my parents make this needed change in their lives. In fact, I embraced my task with fierce, calm single-mindedness. My hope was--and still is--that their move will improve the quality of all of our lives, but especially theirs.*****

But as a result of my narrow focus, my already doubting and overwhelmed creative self further separated itself from me, slipping away between the stacked cartons and piled garbage bags, and then retreating into "the past" that I "couldn't even imagine."

Since my parents have somewhat settled into their new place, I've begun courting poetry again and trying to ease my creative self out of the shadows. This simultaneous reaching forward and reaching back isn't easy work, but I'm glad to be doing it, and I believe in it.

It's been almost a month now since I began late, soon, again, and with hope and support. Increasingly, beacons and guideposts are springing up along my path. Or have they always been there and I'm just seeing them now?

Sometimes, I hear them as music and snippets of conversation. Other times, they take the form of poems and the invitation to read them, to be lifted up by them, and even to make them a part of myself. More about all of this as National Poetry Month continues, the forsythia goes from gold to green, and the birds nest.

* "For the first time, the official National Poetry Month poster features artwork by a high school student: tenth grader Julia Wang from San Jose, California, who has won the inaugural National Poetry Month Poster Contest. Wang’s artwork was selected by contest judges Naomi Shihab Nye and Debbie Millman from among twelve finalists and more than 450 student submissions. It incorporates lines from the poem "An Old Story" by current U. S. Poet Laureate Tracy K. Smith. Read more about Wang’s winning artwork, including the judges’ citations." Quotation from the National Poetry Foundation Web Site Poster Request Form link: https://www.poets.org/national-poetry-month/form/poster-request-form

** Glück, L. (1999). "Nest". In Vita nova (pp. 37-39). New York, NY: Ecco Press.
*** Photo accompanying "Pruning Forsythias in Maine":
https://extension.umaine.edu/publications/wp-content/uploads/sites/82/2015/02/B-Partially-blooming-forsythia-winterkill-of-buds-above-snowline.jpg

**** From William Wordsworth's "The World is Too Much With Us, Late and Soon": https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/45564/the-world-is-too-much-with-us 

***** From Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese": http://www.phys.unm.edu/~tw/fas/yits/archive/oliver_wildgeese.html

****** Thus far, the move has made my parents safer--but that's probably been the only improvement, I'm sad to say.

#NationalPoetryMonth #NationalPoetryMonth2019