What Would You Do With A Day Of Solitude?

Alone for the day. They ask, What are you going to do in that quiet house, all alone? What will you do with ALL that time? 

Shall I waste it? Daydream and piddle it away?  Drink, dance, light candles and incense, play music and write? Write and write and write? Time well wasted. A beautiful wasted afternoon. 

But dusk gathers, and I’m a chicken farmer as well as a writer. Eggs are gathered in baskets and await their sorting and boxing, but now I must go outside into the bitter cold one last time to shut the hens in for the night.

In the light of the quarter moon, the greenhouse glistens like a snow globe and each frosted blade of grass across the expanse of lawn is an ice crystal twinkling like fairy dust in the headlights of my pickup. I’m a chicken farmer and winter has arrived at last. The ground is frozen so my boots won’t sink into the mire that surrounded the chicken coops from the rain and slush preceding Christmas. There was no hope of it drying under the gunmetal sky with the low light of the winter solstice. No hope of a terra firma without the air temperature dipping into the twenties and staying there. Staying there.

I’m a chicken farmer and with dusk the chickens are back inside and roosting, and I must shut the coops. Roosting, they are vulnerable to any creature that might chose to invade the coop under cover of night: the coons and the skunks, the mink, fox and ground hogs, all hungry for a tasty chicken on a cold winter’s night, a meal worth the risk of a foray into populated areas. So I must cross the poultry fence in the light of the headlights I aimed to light my way. I traipse across the frozen blades of fairy grass that crunch underfoot like tiny bones to secure the coop, shut out the varmints and protect the sleeping chickens that turn comatose with the setting of the sun. Lively creatures by day, they turn silent and immobile by night, becoming even more defenseless than they naturally are. 

The stars that populate the sky and the moon at half-mast help to light my way and I reach the open door without tripping over the poultry fence or the feeders or the big stick one must carry by day to ward off the rooster with his spurs. The hens are lined up on their roosts like sparrows on a high wire. The white rooster is on the top rung surrounded by his adoring flock. He lifts his head and gives me a baleful look but doesn't budge from his perch. I slam the door shut and wedge a board against it for added protection against the crafty coon with crafty hands that can turn handles and unlatch fences. Sleep settles over the coop buttoned up for the night, and all are safe. I’m no longer a chicken farmer. I’m a writer.

Cursive Writing vs. Alzheimers

My father has made an odd request of his children this Christmas. He wants a handwritten letter from each of us telling  him what we've been doing. That's all he wants. People used to write letters, especially at Christmas and I think he misses it. My parents don't have a computer so it must seem like nobody is communicating anymore. The art of letter writing is fading from our curriculum. We don't have the mastery of language and penmanship of our ancestors. We think of our great grandparents as being unschooled but they could write circles around us and I wouldn't want to take any of them on in a debate.

There is a current article in The Guardian about the cognitive benefits of cursive writing. Many handwriting advocates and neuroscientists think that penmanship is still mightier than the keyboard, that mastering penmanship has certain cognitive benefits. This makes sense to me. Every letter on the keyboard requires the same action: peck peck peck, while each letter of the alphabet requires a different stroke, engaging our brains in deep thought.  It takes us several years to master this precise motor skill. Cursive writing might even stave off Alzheimer's, that dreaded disease that is predicted to affect 50% of the population by 2050.

The keyboard can't match the emotion of handwriting. As stated in this article, "Each persons' hand is different, the gesture is charged with emotion, lending it a special charm." Maybe this is why those little icons that show emotion were invented, to make up for the soulless keyboard.

So, as I sit down to write a letter to my dad, (even found a pad of unused stationery in a desk drawer) I thought I'd throw out a challenge to everyone. Write a letter to someone this Christmas. It'll make someone's day.

Them

photograph by Robert Doisneau

Oh, for war's sweet end,
to be grounded in home,
freed from the smells
of gore—I mean glory.
We kiss and
we kiss
and would do it again
do it all over again,
not me, not us, but them
they'll do it again 
for there's always a them—
a new wave of them
who yearn for the glory
of the lock and load,
for the trill of the bugle
and the fame of a kiss.
Again.

This image comes from Magpie Tales, the blog dedicated to honing the pens of poets and writers.

The Highest Form Of Art (and goodbye to the G-Man)

                       "If you tell the truth, you don’t have to remember anything." - Mark Twain

I recently found an old journal from a creative writing class in college in which I jotted down everything that teacher said. She told us that the highest form of art is literature and all art is about loss. I didn't understand that at the time, but I wrote it down, sitting on the edge of my seat and taking it all in. It seemed deep, like the Albert Camus novel,The Plague, which my sister gave me to read when I was only thirteen. She had high hopes for me, and I knew I was supposed to like it, but I didn't understand it.

When my brother's house burned to the ground, I wrote a poem. When we found out a family member had cancer, I wrote a poem. When my mother broke her leg and my father couldn't get out of his chair, I wrote a poem. Driving home from the hospital and forgetting the order of the Sorrowful Mysteries, I wrote a poem.

I just found out this morning that Galen Hayes, known in the blog world as Mr. Knowitall, the host of the Friday Flash 55 I participated in for several years, has died.  In one of his last posts he wrote, "Thanksgiving is not about Black Friday sales, or kicking off the Christmas shopping frenzy, it's about family, friends, and the joy of living." I did not know Galen personally, yet felt I did. I sat here and cried for this man I never knew but who touched my life and encouraged me to write my best. I would write an eulogy in 55 words but it seems this would cheapen the loss his family must now live with.

I feel guilty, relying upon tragic events for inspiration, taking advantage of misfortune to compose a sonnet, using the pain of others as fodder for my writer's ambition, my selfish dream of one day being remembered.  Must we experience tragedy and hardship to write anything worth writing? Can a youth unbowed by life write anything that will last beyond their years?

And what about memoir? After writing one, will your family still talk to you? Will they smile when they see you, or will a cloud of hostility color your gatherings, making you an outlier at the table? As a writer, if we aren't telling the truth, is there any point in writing at all? In the back of this old bedraggled journal I'd scribbled, "Write the truth as you know it."  With memory such a fickle creature, that leaves a lot of room for interpretation. Then there is also what Emily Dickinson so wisely said, "Tell the truth, but tell it slant."  I like that.  Goodbye Galen.  I will miss you.

Hounds On The Loose (flash 55)

A pickup truck stops in the middle of the road.

Hounds loosed from the back,

buck their handlers, heels grounded.

The old man looks out his window and wonders

what they’re looking for in his ditch.

He gets his cane and lumbers to his feet

wishing he could run a dog across the snow-swept field.

Time for a Flash 55. We only have 14 hours to save the earth! Rally your words and hurry over to The Imaginary Garden With Real Toads to aid the effort.

Flash, I love you!

Security Theater (flash 55)

The parking lot sparkles on patrol.
The pavement is littered with salt crystals
embedded in the asphalt like diamonds.
The salt will drain off into the sewers
and end up in surrounding wetlands
and ground water, like toxic deicing sludge.
We walk the parking lots looking for trouble,
stare at people with our theater eyes.


I'm happy to make it back into a Flash 55 community, thanks to The Imaginary Garden With Real Toads who picked up the mantle when our Mr. Knowitall (Galen) dropped it to reclaim his offline life. I've missed the 55's so thanks to all of you Toads!

If anyone has a piece of fiction in 55 words they'd like to share, go to the link above and proceed from there. I must confess, this piece, while fiction, is loosely based on facts.

Hope everyone is having a creative weekend.

Hot And Cold

In The City

Boys pace the pavement
in sweat darkened T-shirts.
Girls with pink hair huddle on the curb.
School's out.


In The Country

She wears red fox around her neck
to keep her warm.
She drinks wine with musicians in the mountains
who make music that will outlive them
and the fire they sit around.

The Scout

The barbed wire grapples and snags

like expectation and life gone astray

but it doesn't hurt if you can get away.

Smoke drifts closer and the dogs bray.
Hand-spun cotton but no lingerie,
practical shoes adorn bare legs.
It won't hurt if she gets away.

Photo by Tom Chambers

The image prompt comes from Magpie Tales a blog dedicated to honing the craft of writers and poets and keeping the muse alive, even when it has been ignored and neglected. For me, this image was fraught with contradiction from the barren landscape and barbed wire to the casual expression on the face of the runner, as if someone had just called her name, or asked her a question. She isn't dirty and she isn't sweating, yet she runs. Like a poem, or a short story, it leaves us half circle. The ending is ours to compose.

Flash Fiction

LATER

On the first warm night of the cool summer she wore the sarong she bought in Venice where everyone was beautiful. The fabric was soft as a sigh and brought back the surf that smelled like seaweed and the beach littered with what the ocean didn't need and the muscle volleyball game and the blackest man in America who mimed on the boardwalk. Candle wax from the last time she'd worn it had hardened in little droplets down the front. She could get it out with an iron and a piece of paper towel. But it would have to wait.

The rain came across the fields like wind through corn and what had to be done because he was gone overtook the carefree evening. She took off the sarong and hung it back in the closet, changed into jeans that fit and pulled on the tall rubber boots that didn't.




note: I was going to add one of my pictures but then decided I didn't need one. Couldn't find one that fit this little snippet of life. Couldn't find a picture of emotion, couldn't take a picture of the wind, only the effect it has on things. What am I trying to say?

Hang The Garlic Over The Drive

Summer is busy but should one not always steal a moment to write? We dug our garlic and hung it in the granary.  Dad said to hang it over the drive, but I didn't know what he meant. Then he told me that Grandpa used to park his car in here-there are two big sliding doors on each side of the structure-a perfect place to park your car. But it hasn't been used as a garage in my lifetime. 

So I hung my garlic "over the drive" from the top railing on the third floor, climbing the steep staircase on your right. The old steamer trunk that sits behind the railing against the back wall is empty. I wonder what happened to the contents. Did I imagine them from my childhood?

The corn that borders my garden towers overhead 

and the winter squash and potatoes flourish.

A story about the granary: When we were children, an unruly cousin took our beloved red wagon to the top of those stairs and pushed it over the edge to the concrete below. The impact made a horrible noise and our wagon was smashed beyond repair. I don't think we ever got another. I don't know what compelled him to do that, but every time I climb those stairs, I remember it.

That's it for now. Off to plant more beets and lettuce. I just wanted to wake up my blog and say hello to all. How has your summer been?

Bold Red Fox, Dead Red Hen

Fox have found our chicken coop and they've been taking them out in broad daylight, one by one. A neighbor alerted us to the dead chicken in their yard and fox in the driveway. Fox on the prowl. The egg count is down and now we know why. We wonder how long it's been going on, From a flock of one hundred, you could lose a few and not realize it. We close up the coop at night once the birds are all inside. They are safe at night. But daytime is killing time. Now we know.

The fox slip through the poultry fence like eels through sea grass. Nothing can stop them except a ten gauge, a keen eye and a steady finger.The loaded gun sits by the back door, though I don't like it there. We guard the poultry fence towards dusk when the chickens are still outside foraging. We watch the field, the woods, the fencerow.

We can't go to town, or down the road to dinner, can't weed the asparagus or trellis the tomatoes. Here they come across the open field, bolder than fox should be. There one goes out of range at a brisk trot with a chicken in its mouth, disappearing into the woods. Feathers on the ground. Carnage in the fencerow. Buzzards overhead, cleaning up after the fox.

We mull the fate of the birds we've raised, nurtured through winter with heat lamps to ward off the frigid wind, and now move around on open pasture, water and pamper for the eggs they give us. They are just now beginning to reach their peak egg production. All the hard work through winter was just beginning to pay off.

Mother And The Cutthroat

Every year mother gave me dried delphiniums (massive blooms staked against the wind swayed above the irises and poppies). She’d hang them in a dark closet along with sprigs of lavender. Once dried, they would hold their color through the winter.  I have one delphinium from two years ago. Though faded in color, I save it.

One of her poppies survived the Polar Vortex. I fleshed it out of the weeds and pulled out the invasive quack grass that was smothering it. Big egg-shaped buds covered the plant, a tinge of pink at the tip promising salmon-colored crepe paper blooms in a week, or two, with sun and rain and faith. Faith was  for daffodils in my grandmother’s dictionary, but the daffodils are done and the tulips are done but the poppy is to come. 

But wait. The whirr of the gas-powered weed whacker warns of danger. The swoop of the handle cleaves the air, dismantling everything in its path, protective goggles and gloves for the whacker in full-throttle  approach. Protection for the cutthroat but none for the poppy. In one fell unsupervised swoop, the poppy is in ruins, flecks of bud (hints of salmon) lie scattered in the grass like fluffs of dandelion. 

Sister presented mother with the remnants. Poppy pieces in her lap, like rose petals saved from a prom corsage.

The Willard

Willard Asylum - Lisa Gordon

The walls sweat
like my doctor's brow.
I long to touch dry bark,
rasp my cheek along the flank of a willow,
rest a hip against the oak
at the back of the lane.

They tell me it will make me feel better.
I swallow and nod and try
to get along.
But the walls waver and sweat

like my doctor's brow.
I can tell you how that tastes.
I want the sandy lane under my feet,
sand I can brush off and leave behind.


I wrote this poem for an artistic interpretation challenge from Margaret at the Imaginary Garden. This photo of the Willard Asylum in the Finger Lakes Region of New York was taken by Lisa Gordon when she toured the facility and photographed it. The asylum opened in 1869 and was closed in 1995. During the time it was operational, 50,000 patients called it home. Six thousand died there. Also of interest to me is Margaret's link to an ongoing project by photographer Jon Crispin called "The Willard Suitcases". He is photographing the contents of suitcases left behind by patients of the Willard Insane Asylum.

There are more photos of the asylum on Lisa Gordon's website here, including this one of a patient's grave, marked only by a number plate set in the ground.

Willard Grave Marker - Lisa Gordon

Keeper Of The Light

Boat In The Moonlight - Odilon Redon

No one knows how he lost his way

on the familiar run from

the mouth of the river

to his room on the quay.

The moon was out

when he ran aground
and the boat was found
but not the old man.

Only the keeper knows

what happened that night

how he fell asleep

whilst tending the light.

April is poetry month, and the challenge today at The Imaginary Garden was to write an ekphrasis poem based on the work of French symbolist painter and illustrator, Odilon Redon. Ekphrasis is a literary description of a piece of art.

TheTurtle

I walked around the pond in search of life.

The center is swirled in snowbanks
but the thaw has begun.

No floating fish-the feared winter kill-off, 
only leaves and corn husks float 
in the debris of spring.

Yet under the dock, air bubbles surface

and I imagined the turtle stirring

with dreams of a dragonfly’s spin.

But for now he sleeps. It’s only April.

The challenge here was to give our best and worst of April in 66 words. 

Memoir/Memory

Memory is like a foggy morning: as the fog lifts, things take shape. A foggy morning pleases my writer's heart, like nature and seclusion. Upon awaking to fog, I want to light candles and brew coffee. I want it to stay like this: still and quiet.

Nothing except in things. 

So, I've decided to write a memoir, triggered by a contest notice. I'd never thought I had a life others would want to read about, but as I thought this over, I decided that wasn't true and began to dig around in my head for the childhood events that stand out like signposts. As one was unveiled and examined another emerged, like trees in a fogbank.

Do you ever wonder what made you the person you are today? How you got to where you are, why some things matter to you and other don't? What your career choices have been and the people you are attracted to and the ones who repel?  Writing a memoir is to take an untraveled road of discovery. And I've had the strangest, most vivid dreams of places and things and people I've not thought about in a long time. Do you wonder at the mother-lode of memory buried in our brains, waiting to be brought to light and shared?

I'm an environmentalist because my father is and my grandfather was, as was his and so on. Though they didn't call themselves that, any farmer who farms the land in a sustainable way and raises grazing animals while adhering to the time-honored practice of husbandry, is essentially an environmentalist. On road trips, Dad was constantly pointing out things of interest, from a herd of cattle to a hawk to the setting sun. He never let nature go unnoticed and while we might have been prone to day-dreaming in the backseat or squabbling about who was touching who, he drew our attention out the window to the vista in front of us or the one behind.

So that is one signpost in the road I've traveled to become the person I am today. But there are things I'm afraid to write about too, as sure as the fog will lift and the noise intrude. It takes a lot of courage to write a memoir and I commend the masters of this genre, namely Jeannette Walls who wrote The Glass Castle. And while I never led that nomadic of a life, it hasn't been one without interest and intrigue.

I've always found the idea of a "residency" intriguing. This farm might serve as my residency, except family obligations and chores always interfere. Life intrudes. That's the beauty of a true residency. Nothing intrudes between you and the writing. Dare I apply for a residency? Could I be gone for two weeks to participate in an endeavor that society places little value on? Many would see it as selfish and self-absorbed. I would see it as the gift and opportunity of a lifetime.

The closest I've ever come to a residency was a friend's summer house on a wake-free lake in Gladwin. I stayed there by myself for three days, nothing but loons, lily pads, jumping pike and grazing cattle in a field on the other side. I loved every single solitary minute. I wasn't afraid. I spread my manuscript out around the living room (itself, a luxury) and let it absorb every waking moment, stopping only to eat and sleep. In three days I edited fifty pages, wrote a poem and penned two or three sentences of another idea. Think what could be done with two weeks!

The Swan Song for Flash 55

Many a Thursday I stayed up late

to write a story for the man.

He liked beginnings and he liked neat ends,
so I labored long over rhythm and rhyme,

whilst counting my words and staying inbounds.

Other than word count, all he asked we do

was make it fiction, wasn't supposed to be true.

On a cold winter morning a girl was found

frozen to death in the snow

Nobody knows what happened

but speculation abounds.

Did she slip and fall by her own accord?

Too much drink and a lover’s row?

Would it were summer we could sleep it off

and wake in the arms of the morn.

After hosting the Friday fun-fest for 7 years, Galen Hayes aka Mr. Knowitall is passing the reins to someone else. I would encourage you to join the farewell tour.

All good things come to an end.

Galen, you truly are the most gracious of hosts.

I’ll miss writing for you.

A Black Parable

"Fiction is the great lie that tells the truth about how the world lives."
                       ~Dorothy Allison

     

In Oscar Wilde's "The Picture of Dorian Gray", many universal truths are revealed between the lines of convoluted verbiage. Just as there were plodding passages I skimmed over, there were glittering sparks of dialogue and introspective pondering, which caught me by the feminine equivalent of "the balls".

I wanted to share a few of my favorite lines that made me stop and think.

1. "Each of us has heaven and hell in him."
2. "Sin is a thing that writes itself across a man's face. It cannot be concealed. People talk sometimes of secret vices. There are no such things. If a wretched man has a vice, it shows itself in the lines of his mouth, the droop of his eyelids, the molding of his hands even."
3. “To get back one’s youth, one has merely to repeat one’s follies.”
4. “Nowadays most people die of a sort of creeping common sense, and discover when it is too late that the only things one never regrets are one’s mistakes.”
5. “There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all.”
6. “He was always late on principle, his principle being that punctuality is the thief of time.”
7. “The lad was premature. He was gathering his harvest while it was yet spring.”
8. “No civilized man ever regrets a pleasure and no uncivilized man ever knows what a pleasure is.”
9. “He had told the girl whom he had lured to love him that he was wicked, and she had laughed and answered that wicked people were always very old and very ugly. What a laugh she had!—just like a thrush singing. And how pretty she had been in her cotton dresses and large hats! She knew nothing, but she had everything that he had lost.” 

Finally, having lived half my life in the country and knowing this to be the cleverest of ironies. my favorite is: 

10.  "Anyone can be good in the country; there are no temptations there."

Though I do adhere to #6. I just had never heard it expressed so eloquently. Do you have a favorite? Have you read this novel? It sat on my shelf for fifteen years. I don't know why I put it off.

Under The Knife (Fri.Flash 55)

Would they have us melt some Tupperware
and spread it on our bread?
One molecule from plastic
should be their claim instead.
Round-up in the waves of grain
they took her breast by knife.
The deer steer clear of GMOs,
amphibians the coast.
Let’s all melt some Tupperware
and spread it on our toast.



If you like butter on your toast, let the G-Man know!

Sorry, G., I’ve veered out of the fictional world this week into reality’s nightmare.With the latest news I got all creepy. The brown food coloring in cola has now been determined to be a carcinogenic. Pepsi rebuked the findings, saying even if true, most of their customers only drink 1/3 of a can a day so amounts should be considered safe. Does anyone know anyone who opens a can of pop and only drinks one third? And why is margarine in the dairy aisle? It isn’t even food. And it certainly isn't yellow. Margarine was “invented” and it is grayish white, the way you’ll find it in Europe (if you find it at all), where they aren’t allowed to dye it.

Boomerang (Friday Flash 55)

Even as a child, she was drawn to the night
when the air was soft and fraught with life.
He, too, a child of twilight—
mysterious boy boomerang in his belt.
Was my father’s, he said,
dog circling, divining the night air.
Fingers entwined, he taught her to throw
so it would always come back.



If it's Friday, or Friday Eve, it's time for Flash, Flash 55.  This weekly event is hosted by the G-Man who loves fiction with a plot and 55 words.

In Pursuit Of A Sparrow

This week at Poets and Writers, there's a poetry prompt to write a poem about a time the weather has affected your life. "Weather has a spiritual aspect and a profound affect on us even though it doesn't know we exist."

In the midst of this deep freeze, something called me from bed at five in the morning. Minus thirteen degrees outside, and the furance runs without pause. Why am I not still bundled in bed with a pillow over my head? Because of the poem that won't leave me alone?


It's the snow, it's the snow, deep and blowing and more
and the road is not there nor the drive nor the fields
nor silo with its rounded white globe.
Not there.
The birds have all fled to the wood and the cows
bury their noses in sweet fragrant hay.
The bull dreams of grass and the sun on his back
and the chickens fluff their feathers, heat lamps under their wings.

It came quietly in the night, like pirates boarding a ship,
blanketed the Queen Anne's Lace gone to seed in a ditch

then bestowed billows of white on the evergreen boughs
and laid down ruffles of lace up to their waist.
Silent silent.
The car lies like a behemoth under a quilt
and the bird feeders are frozen and covered with snow.
So still, so still.

But then the wind stirred on a rotational pull
and with hackles raised, set off in pursuit.
It rallied the snow, which must be put in its place,
must be molded and banked and taught to behave
and now white is the sky and the roof of the barn
and the house and the field where wheat once grew tall.

A little brown sparrow lands on my sill,
she lands in a candle nestled in snow.
Soft and brown at my window, right there at my window,
this little winged creature quivers and shakes,
under stalks of arugula gone to seed in a vase.  

Eyes dart to and fro, tis a mean trickery,
these stems bereft of seeds but decked out prettily
(to us)
in white Christmas lights.
What’s its use asks the sparrow,
so fragile yet hardy of wing and sinew
It has no seed or shelter, it’s nothing to me.

So wise, the sparrow, poised to leave. To leave.
But wait.
The Christmas tree hauled outside on the porch—
denuded of finery yet beautiful still—
has blown off in the gale, but its branches are thick
and welcoming still as on that night in the lot
when we chose it over others. All others.
Welcoming.

She flies into the winter of my spent Christmas tree,
disappears from sight but I know she's in there.
Then joined by a junco who was lost in the wind
a chubby little junco, charcoal blue and lost gray.
then, look! a fat dove skitters onto the porch,
wings flutter and clap and he joins them in there. 
All so hardy and knowing and independent of me.


Thank you for reading my long weather poem. I couldn't seem to stop.  But one more thing before I go, from Book Riot, this past week comes a list of ten wonderful Kurt Vonnegut quotes. If you've stayed with me thus far, I would leave you with my favorite.

"The America I loved still exists, if not in the White House or the Supreme Court or the Senate or the House of Representatives or the media. The America I love still exists at the front desks of our public libraries."

Amen

Drinking a Dead Man's Beer (fridayflash55)

   

Someone poured a stein for the deceased
and set it on the mantle.
It had warmed but wasn’t flat.

The sun danced off the lake
which should have been ice-covered
but was as bare as the hands
wrapped in a rosary.

Let them wonder that you walked
amongst their grieving
and finished your final beer unfettered.



If you ever drank a dead man's beer, let the G-Man know. Write a flash piece of fiction in exactly 55 words and let the most gracious host know. Cut it up right. And have a Happy New Year!