New Poem: New This Season

Since I've started working at my great outdoor museum, I tend to spend a lot of time outside.  So much of my job revolves around what's growing, blooming, dying, falling, that every so often, I have to write about it. Right now the big question is when the daffodils will be out. (Not for a while -- we can't magically turn them on, you know.)

But there's something really pretty, really hopeful about seeing the little green leaflets peak up out of the dead grass -- kind of like that flash of lace on racy underwear, a promise of further delight.

Hence, the poem.

 ---

NEW THIS SEASON

Today it is April, and I know
That Earth, too, is itching to peel off her winter- white long johns
in favor of the coming season’s newest floral frocks.
Still, Winter lingers, and with it,
the heavy coats of snow, the caps of ice.
Yet Earth begins to dream in polychrome.

Just yesterday I saw a hint of green-spaded lace peeking out
from underneath the snow-white nightgown
and there were sprays of witch-hazel in her hair.
On my morning walk the squill, spilling out in blue haze along the hillside,
promised new delights for her next lover
when those tired brown leaves finally get packed away.

Oh, sister, I am with you.
I, too, am tired of feeling frumpy.
Bring out your blue dress and your shoes that shine.

Spring (poor silly man) is waiting just around the corner to make his entrance,
sweep you off your feet with sweet words and sprays of flowers.
But your friend Winter is still lounging at the door
 Even though we’ve all told him, more than once, to go home
and take his troubles with him.

 (Spring is at heart a coward’s season
Creeping in when Winter finally packs his dingy whites and leaves.)

So we wait.

But there was birdsong from behind your boudoir door
and my heart wished you would just open up
and sing that tramp right off your doorstep.

The Uneaten Feast

Every so often, everyone needs a good cry. Not necessarily because of any one thing, although those are good, too, but every once in a while, after a lot of little tiny things build up and build up, sometimes you just need to let the dam go and let the tears out.

Well, I hadn't had a cry in a while, and this morning, I was thinking (quite randomly, I have no idea why) of a friend of mine, Shannon, and suddenly there are all these tears on my face.

So I stood in my room for a while, in the gray of the morning (it  had to have been about seven or so) and let the tears out. I didn't really have a reason for it, other than that I missed Shannon, and all the other people that thinking of Shannon reminded me of, and it occurred to me that people are a bit like Champagne bottles. Life shakes us and shakes us and then with one shake too many the cork comes flying out. Waste of good Champagne, usually. Needs to be drunk right away, if it doesn't all get lost in fizz.

I didn't have anyone to share champagne with this morning, which might have been part of the reason I lost my cork, so to speak. How much of who we are and how many of our gifts get lost in fizz when we don't have someone to share them with?

Hence the poem. Haven't written a poem in a good long while, but here it is. It's called The Uneaten Feast. I suppose, on a second read, it could be rather innuendo-laden, but it's really meant about friendship.


Like a cask full of spirits
stoppered to keep them in
so is a human heart straining its staves.

The sky was gray and the rain was soft on my window
and as the sky was weeping so I was weeping

I am a cask that has not been tapped
I am a drum stretched too tight
I am a loaf that waits to be split
I am a candle that has not been burned.
I am a stone turned in a strange river, and no other stone knows me.
I am a feast at which no friend eats.

The wine in the cask is rich with waiting
and the heart in me is weak with wanting
Take a chair at my table and let us drink together
And the warmth of my spirits will be warmth for yours.

Poem: To The Rainstorm Disturbing My Sleep

3 a.m. rainstorms, we have to stop meeting like this.

The first time,
when you woke me up with lightning in your dancing eyes,
I thought, What's one night of sleep, more or less?

It was a forbidden-fruit kind of fun,
lying in my bed while the rest of the world was sleeping,
and thinking deep thoughts as you drummed your fingers against the window
and sang me little songs and made me forget about
 everything except you.

We were a little island in the night, just you and I.
 I was warm and safe and my poet’s soul never second guessed myself.

(Until that afternoon, when I had to own to all the yawning.  Because what's one night of sleep, between lovers?)

But the second time?

The second time, when you raged outside my house
 and hammered your fists against my front door
and threatened to tear the roof off if I didn’t
pay attention to you,
talk with you,
dance with you,
love you,
and I spent too many sleepless hours
trying not to let you in, until the dawn and the wind (dear neighbors) frightened you off for me?

Then I regretted letting you in that first time.

No, 3 a.m. rainstorm, we can't meet like this anymore.

I'm in a healthy, committed relationship with my 6 a.m. alarm,
and I'm not going to break up something like that
for a little hidden pleasure with a rainstorm on the side.

Period Preparatory -- a poem.

It’s strange
that after three weeks of answering 8 o’clock phone calls thinking

This will be it

and the one that is it

is preceeded only by another murmur of indignation thinking

Who on earth calls at 8 o'clock at night?

3 weeks of thinking every 8 o'clock call will be the one announcing that we need to
stop our clocks
cover our mirrors
and
bring out the black crepe to blot our eyes.

and the one call does not do any of these things.

we do not stop the clocks or cover the mirrors.
The black crepe does not make an appearance, nor do the floods of tears.

My mother goes back to work
My father turns on the television
And me?

I

f  l  o  a  t,

an untethered balloon,
afraid that to do anything other than mourn will mean
that she was a trivial thing,
that I did not love her.

I have been answering 8 o’clock calls for three weeks,
for a  month and a half,
since before Christmas,
since forever,
thinking
This will be it.

And this is it.

And I find I have no tears to cry.

Only a kind of small hole in my heart,
as though all the tears
have already leaked out in preparation.

---

My great-aunt died yesterday. I didn't really know what to do with myself. She'd been suffering for a long time, and death was kind of for the best at this point. I still didn't know what to do with myself.

So I wrote a poem.

A "Period Preparatory" is a time frame before something else happens -- the phrase as it is seen here is usually "Period Preparatory to War" a pre-mobilization phase of planning and readiness.

Prayer for the Beginning of Lent

When you ask me today,

Friend, what are you doing?

I will tell you,

I am building the inner room.
I am letting the inner room build me.
I am constructing a place for the spirit of God to dwell.

You will say to me, Friend, show me the place!
For I wish to labor there also. Show me the hillside, that I may find it pleasing to my Lord,

and I will tell you,

I am building a room without walls – I am building a house without beams to hold it.
I have taken my ribs for walls, and my spine will be the ridgeline of the roof.
My eyes will be its windows, and the roof of my mouth the lintel posts.

Oh, my beloved friend, if I could admit you!
If I could show you truly the dwelling place of God within me. For it is my wellspring and my delight,
It is a place truly pleasing to me,
And I would share it with you always.

Let my words go in and out from my doorways into yours,
Like friends moving between our two houses
and in that way your place will be known to mine
and mine to yours.

----

One of my goals for Lent this year is to do a little bit of spiritual reading once or twice a week, and I decided to start that I'd go to Mass today. It ended up being a little bit more emotional than I bargained for (think me and crying and looking ridiculous over nothing except being in church reading) and, of course, when I get emotional, I write. I wrote part of this on the way home.

I figured out I really, really like being able to visit other people's inner rooms, as they're described in the poem. If you want to talk about God, I'm listening. My inner room is open to you.

To Vaughn, on the Death of Your Father: A Reflection on Endings

This last week has been, for me, a time for extensive reflection on endings.

As my friends were partying away the end of another school year, and celebrating the end of our years as college students, I received the unwelcome and unanticipated news that my cooperating teacher from my high school student teaching experience had died. I began reflecting a great deal not on the end of eras, but on the end of a life.

My teacher (I will call him ‘my teacher’ because that is what he was, in a number of respects) took his own life last Monday. No one will say why, but it has been speculated that he was dealing with a number of personal demons of great magnitude. As a colleague of only two scant months, I could not point to any one thing in his life and say with certainty, “This was what troubled him most.” In fact, from what I could see, there was so much in his life pointing away from suicide – his teaching license had just been renewed, his master’s thesis was well underway, and it was finally warm enough to take his two year old son outside to play, something he had been looking forward to for months.

And yet, here we are, and I am writing a blog post about endings, and not beginnings.

As I moved out of the dorms yesterday, saying goodbye to people I have spent the better part of four wonderful years with, it seemed to me that I was almost sealing them into coffins. “These are the people I will not ever see again. These are the laughs I will not hear, the voices I will not listen for, the door knocks that will not sound.” I think part of the reason I did not grieve as much as some at the passing of my teacher was that I had already done the same for him. He was a part of my life that I was finished with, and I was moving on.

Yet now something strange has happened. Instead of remaining in that closed part of my life, as he would have done had he lived, he is now more a part of my thoughts than ever. Listening to his funeral, and watching the hundreds of students both he and his wife had mentored, I wondered if I was making a bad decision not to stay in teaching, if I was somehow dishonoring him by not remaining in education. He was described by his brother as a humble man, a sentiment I concurred with, and yet my most vivid memory of him remains what he told our students on my last day at the high school – “Miss G is extremely smart, and she could do pretty much anything in the world. We are extremely lucky that she has chosen to go into teaching.”

High praise, especially for a man of few words and no mean intellect himself.

My immediate thought after hearing about his death was that I should write about it. I tried this several times, each poem sounding more terrible than the last. This, I decided, was because I was trying to write a poem about him and instead writing a poem about my personal experience with the news of his death, which didn't make for a very interesting poem topic. None of the poems I started begged to be finished.

While I was walking around campus last week on one of the final sunny days of the semester, I couldn't help realizing how green the grass was. Monday morning had been incredibly and vividly sunny, a welcome break after several dismal days, and as I was walking, I realized that he had missed seeing that sunny day, taking advantage of the first real opportunity to go outside with his son. And the first line came to me.

He died in springtime, as the grass was greening.

Here, finally, was the poem begging to be born. I decided to write a poem, not addressed to him, but to his son, a boy of only two years who is, by all accounts, the child who will grow up to be his father.

So, here it is—the celebration of the end of a year, an era, a life. If I were teaching this in our creative writing class, I would remind everyone that this is an elegy, a poem of praise for the dead, and ask everyone to look for poetic elements. I might also ask them to compare it to WH Auden's In Memory of W.B. Yeats, and explain that Auden's poem influenced the poet. I can still hear him telling me about the different poetic techniques I should be sure to cover in class.

I ask you all only to read it.

--

To Vaughn, on the Death of Your Father

He died in springtime, as the grass was greening.
The birds were singing, and the wind was blowing,
and the breath of the universe blew him away,
overwhelming.

Let me tell you what I knew of him, in the way that heroes are told of their long-dead kin,
so that you will know of his greatness, and remember him well by it.
You do not know it now, but you were a hero to him.

He was tall in the way that trees are tall (and that all fathers are tall to their sons)
in the way that reached up to the sky with confidence and grace
and walked his ways in such a manner that said, to those that knew him, I will take my time with this, and it will be time sweetly taken.

He was a man of few words, carefully said, painstakingly spoken, and yet a man extravagant in praise.
Often he praised you. Praised your smile, your laugh, your walks and child’s ways.

He was a man of great love.

I did not know this as others did, did not see this as others saw, but I saw he loved you.
His desk was filled with pictures of you, and he had,
on a keyring already heavy with responsibility, a huge picture of you, taken at Easter,
one more reminder of you, his greatest joy.

And you brought him great joy.
When you are older, and you wish to have known him, and you hate him for leaving you so soon,
know that it was not your fault that he left, that he took away what was only his to give.
Know that he loved you, as the wind loves the branches of the trees,
inseparable.
Know that he was loved by his students, his far-sons and far-daughters.
Many there were of them, and yet only one of you.
He was father to them as he did not have a chance to be to you,
his only son.

Other things I wish you would know about him were small things, things that will not matter.
Yet I will say them.

Every day he ate a peanut butter sandwich for lunch,
Quietly chewing, grading papers.
Silence was his golden time.
He golfed and was good at it.
Laughter was not his enemy, and his smile was wide.
He wore brightly colored shirts, and was uncomfortable in ties.
He read the New Yorker religiously, and John Updike’s writing brought him to rapturous attention.
Determination comforted him,
Irreverence and studied ignorance tried his patience.
His counsel was good, and he was reckoned among the wise.

He wished that you would know the sunshine, and the wild winter he waited out to bring you into the sun.

So, son of your father, go out into the sunshine.
Listen for his voice in the hallways of his school, in the fairways of his game, in the simple pleasure of a sunny day, shared.

He died in springtime, as the grass was greening.
the leaves were budding, and the flowers were blooming,
and at his passing, the universe paused to grieve him.

High School, Abbreviated.

The hour is over, and I long for the days

When men still wrote poems in pursuit of praise.

Where the old would smile and the young would nod

On hearing a verse in search of God,

When turning a poem was as much an art

As drawing a drink from the well of the heart.

These are not them; the rabble I feed

Have neither joy, nor want, nor need

For the stories I tell or the verse I share.

All this, to them, is empty air

And poetry brings no thrill, but curse,

A malady, blight, a rot or worse

And yet it seems so clear to me

They’ve filled their lives with poetry

With their heads fairly teeming with childhood songs

And the rise of the headphone headed throngs.

So why not venture, if only to gain?

Why not spill the wine if it may not stain?

Or…perhaps it is your greatest fear

That you will see something in what’s said here

And your mind’s eye, like mine, will gaze

Back to where they wrote poems in pursuit of praise.

----

That's kind of how I feel about high school now. Also, you all should start following Taylor Mali's blog, Definitely Beautiful. He's one of my new favorite people.

Literature Does Not Exist in a Vacuum, and Other Things the Seventh Harry Potter Movie Taught Me

I don't think there are any spoilers in this post, but just to be certain, I am talking about the latest Harry Potter movie, so anyone who hasn't seen it might want to beware.

-----


Last night I was one of those crazy college kids out at midnight to see Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part One. This morning I am one of those crazy, sleep-deprived college kids who will go through thier Friday absolutely over the moon at the fact that the movie was so good. I was euphoric leaving that theater last night. I was so happy I had no words. I just sat in the car and beamed. This was the story I loved, the story I read aloud to my little sister and then re-read out loud just for fun a second, and a third, and a fourth time. They kept many of what I thought were some of Rowling's best bits and I was grateful for that.

I had a rough day yesterday -- I gave my book review of Android Karenina (coming soon to a blog near you!) and I taught part of a lesson on Narrative Poetry.  The poem I chose was one of my favorites, The Geebung Polo Club by A.B. Paterson, and the response volume fell flatter than a water balloon eating concrete after being dropped from the 90th floor.

It was bad, in other words. No one said a thing. Getting answers out of those kids was like pulling teeth. And after all that stress, I needed a win, and I found one. Dan, Emma, Rupert. David Yates and all their many friends and accomplices DELIVERED. But stories are curious things -- as we were watching the movie, my friends and I, we couldn't help making connections to other things we had seen, things we had read. Each of us brings a unique selection of prior knowledges and texts with us when we read: it's like packing a suitcase and stowing in on the train for the remainder of the ride. And for us, many of those things we were bringing with us were poems.

Before the movie began (we were at the theatre two hours early, we had to amuse ourselves somehow) we were singing quietly amongst ourselves. Selections included Pippen's Song from Return of the King, The Call from Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe, and There and Back Again, also from Lord of the Rings. All these songs can link back to Harry Potter -- they talk about the eventual triumph over evil, the renewal of hope, and the belief that we, too, have a place and a purpose in the world.

During the movie I thought several of David Yates' nature shots looked like Lord of the Rings country (including one where Harry, Ron, and Hermione are walking through a field -- I wanted someone to start singing "There and Back Again" right there) that Locket!Harry and Hermione reminded me of some perverse version of Adam and Eve (and also, at the same time, Scary!Galadriel from Fellowship of the Ring) and, perhaps best of all, that Dobby's death reminded me of a poem, one of my favorites and one which, unfortunately, I didn't get a chance to share with my friends on the car ride home because we were too busy discussing the rest of the movie.

While Dobby needs no other epitaph than the tremendous life he lived, Robert Louis Stevenson's "Requiem" is, I think, also fitting given Dobby's final lines.

"REQUIEM"

Under the wide and starry sky,

Dig the grave and let me lie,

Glad did I live and gladly die,

And I laid me down with a will.

This be the verse you grave for me:

Here he lies where he longed to be,

Home is the sailor, home from sea,

And the hunter home from the hill.

And more than anything else, I wish I could share this expereince of poetry with my students, the idea that it connects us and shares threads of experience just like stories do. It provokes emotion, attempts to answer our questions about life, and binds us to other people. It does not always have an arcane meaning. You do not have to beat it with a hose to get a meaning out of it, to paraphrase Billy Collin's excellent poem Introduction to Poetry. Sometimes you can merely let it be.

Case of the Mondays

So, it seems like the world is out to get me and everyone I know today. Huge exams happened, people were violently ill, papers got handed back with horrible grades on them, hurt feelings came to the boiling point, expletives were exchanged in large quantities and my afternoon apple was full of mold and tasted like lemon scented cleaning solution. It was just a bad day to be here, in other words.

In the midst of all this Monday nastiness, I have managed to retain some shred of hope that the rest of this week will be better. And in honor of all my long-suffering freinds, who could all probably use a kind word and a glass of something stronger right now, I am re-posting a poem I wrote a little while ago on the subject of bad days. I hope it is a source of comfort to those of you who, like my freinds, have come down with a bad case of the Mondaze.

It Could Be Worse

The days for frowning are varied, I know,

when the rain won't stop and your car won't go

The days that poets never praise

are the days that require my special phrase

It's nothing fancy, just four little words

to remind me my troubles are far from absurd.

When your brow is furrowed, expression terse,

remember this -- It could be worse.

Oh, some will rant and some will curse

I say only "It could be worse!"

I could be sick, or stuck in bed!

I could be hurting -- I could be dead!

The sky could be falling, the grass could be blue,

I could be small bits in somebody's stew.

My life's going forward instead of reverse --

I can get past this; It could be worse.

We haven't hit bottom, the end's still in sight,

There will be a stop to this terrible blight.

I have people who love me, and people who care

(and people who don't want me ripping out hair!)

So when your day stinks, remember this verse,

and repeat after me -- "It could be worse!"

Quiet Time

I talk a lot on this blog about secular writing -- writing stories, writing songs, writing about my life. I'm going to take a break from that for a little while and talk about something I don't discuss a lot about: writing prayers, which I have been known to do from time to time. Oftentimes when I write a prayer I don't actually commit it to paper -- I just say whatever comes to mind about what I'm thankful for around a dinner table or with some friends. Yet this, too, is writing. Some of those have been pretty good, so I've starting writing prayers, on paper, for other things.

It's my first day back at campus, and lately I've been thinking a lot about the fantastic examples on how to live life that I see in the people around me. So I thought I'd write a prayer about it. A freind of mine, Cody, who is a great deal more religious than I am, told me that when writing a prayer one is actually praying it a number of times while one composes it, going over the words and the ideas one wants to put on paper.

As I sit here in my t-shirt from the Arboretum near my house, it's not hard to imagine me as a tree-hugger. I love trees, and I love being outdoors, and I love the image of the Tree of Life, as well as that line in John's gospel "I am the vine, and you are the branches; Whoever does not abide in me is thrown away like a branch and withers; such branches are gathered, thrown into the fire, and burned." People are a lot like trees; we grow up, we reach out to people, we put down roots. When I first had the idea for this prayer, I only had the first line -- "You have set me, a tiny seedling, in the midst of a great forest."

As I finished writing this piece this morning, I was thinking a lot about the freshmen and women who are just starting their orientation process today at Saint Ben's and Saint John's. Really, this prayer is for them, the tiny seedlings who are being transplanted in this forest here in central Minnesota and the many other seedlings in other colleges all over the United States who are beginning classes this week, including my brother. I pray that they can grow tall where they are planted, just as I feel I have.


Great Creator God, Cultivator of the Universe,
you have set me, a tiny seedling, in the midst of a great forest.
Let me grow here, let me prosper;
Let me reach up my branches and feel the warmth of your sun, and the cooling comfort of your rain.
Let the great trees around me be my shelter and my guide;
Let me learn from their example, that I may grow tall here in your Garden of gardens.
When the wind blows, let me bend, but not break;
Where there is rottenness in other trees, let none break my branches or uproot me.
Let my roots grow deep, that none may move me from your holy ground.
May the others in my life use the gifts you have given me,
the shelter of my arms and the fruits of my soul and the shade of my spirit.
When I die, let me seep back into the soil
and enrich another.

Eine Kleine Schneemuisk -- A Little Bit of Snow Music.

I could write an actual blog post this week about my writing essays paper on relationships, which I am turning in today after what I think was a successful workshop and edit. I could talk about the unwilling and struggling readers we've been discussing in Pedagogy. I could talk about my book arts project and the typographer Eric Gill.

All of these involve work and some semblence of brain function. Instead, I'm going to give you a poem. I wrote it while I was at work the other day staring out the window to our courtyard and watching the drifting snow.


I think, if I stare out this window long enough

out into the whiteness,

out into the drifting snow

I'll see an angel there.

The wind wraps the snow around,

folds it up like origami and makes it slide around curves

that aren't there,

sewing up the seams on this sheet

with a needle made out of the icicles

hanging from the house eaves.

I think they're angel curves

that make the body being wrapped around,

the celestial being getting dressed for the day in another snow-white garment.

So maybe, if I stare long enough out of this window,

I'll catch a glimpse of what has never been before seen by man or woman --

One of God's elect in their underthings,

Another form to be caressed

Another body made cold by wind
and warm by love.

Seamus Heaney Reading

I finished this little project a little while ago, and I just realized I never shared it. It's from the Seamus Heaney Reading we went to in Clifden; I recorded the Nobel Laureate and then subtitled the poem he was reading.

Over the Hills and Far Away (In Ireland)

One of the first things my history professor iterated in his class was that Ireland has been a land for poets since time immemorial, and that the Aes Dana, the learned class of druid-bards who kept the traditions and stories and brehon laws alive, were some of the most important people in Irish society. Poets are still highly valued today, as seen by the tremendous turnout at at Seamus Heaney reading I recently attended.

I've been writing like a fool since I've gotten here, poetry mostly, but I haven't for the most part been working on my fanfiction. Mostly because I have no time, partially because I have no space in which to write and be alone, and partially because I can't bring myself to devote time.

But something's been nagging me since I got into Galway and saw several times the great Anglo-Norman names of the founders of the city, merchants and such who must have come over with Strongbow and set up shop on the River Corrib because it's a fantastic place for boats. One prominent name is D'arcy, and the other is De Burgo, or De Bourgh.

Yes, there is a Pride and Prejudice fanfic lurking in this city, waiting to be written about the Darcy family's Irish cousins. But it fits! It does! It fits so well I'm surprised no one's thought of writing it yet. I can see it now -- Elizabeth and Darcy's quiet, genteel demense in London is tumbled head over heels when Irish relations of Darcy's come to stay for the season. Are they proud of these relations? Of course not, they're Irish, one can hear Lady de Bourgh saying distastefully. They run practically wild in that country, you know. And they were in trade.

Never mind that it was back in the 12th century, Lady de Bourgh. You're titled because you married well, you twit.

What would then be done with these cousins I have yet to determine. But it'll come to me.

Nose to the Grindstone

Wrong grindstone for this blog, though. I haven't been writing as much as I'd like to be right now (although my latest Harry Potter fanfiction effort did inspire my freind DarkKnight to write a rather puzzled post on his "As Iron Sharpens Iron" blog, which is a strange kind of compliment, I think; you can read the blog post here)

Most of my time at present is consumed with preparations for my trip to Ireland and my little ten day excursion to London. I've been filled with budget concerns, travel time tables, and more emails from my trip director than I'd probably care to ever read, as most of them are giving me an ulcer about this trip.

Oh, and I turned twenty on Tuesday. So there was much cake being eaten. Good for my sweet tooth, bad for the developing ulcer.

So that's what's new. In leiu of a real post today, I'm going to post a poem that I think I have not shared with anyone. I found it on my computer the other day and decided it was good enough to share.

It's called "The Man I Killed."

The man I killed wore tattered blue --
he had a wife and children, too.
The uniform I wear is green --
and it is whole and somewhat clean.

The man I killed had hair of red--
he had a hearth, a home, a bed.
The hair upon my head is brown --
I have no family in my town.

The man I killed had farmer's hands,
streaked with the dirt from distant lands.
My hands are also streaked with toil
but not from dust, and not with soil.

The gun is resting in my hands, its barrel hot and black
His breath has left his body now, he is not coming back.

I don't know why I could not see --
The man I killed was just like me.

A Birthday!

Today, dear friends, is the birthday of one of my all-time favorite poets, and the reason why I can safely say I love dusty old white man poetry, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow--So, Happy 202nd birthday, Henry! Now, my readers have a lot to thank this man for -- he contributed the rhyme scheme from The Skeleton in Armor to my Chronicles of Narnia poem The Star's Daughter, the title and driving inspiration for my first major fanfic, The Meaning and Mystery of the Rose, the driving inspiration behind my ACHIEVE project, The Epic of Astrid, and above all other things, a longstanding love of narrative poetry.


I first met HWL here, at the Wayside Inn in Sudbury, Massachusetts. We went to have lunch there with my grandparent's neighbors, the Cammetts. I was about seven at the time and couldn't appreciate the book they gave me, a clothbound copy of The Tales of a Wayside Inn, a collection of narrative poems Longfellow wrote inspired by a summer he spent here in the 1860s. In it, a group of travelers (The Landlord, the Student, the Sicilian, the Spanish Jew, the Musician, the Theologian, and the Poet) meet around a fire and exchange stories. It's a wonderfully evocative collection, containing such classics as Paul Revere's Ride, that staple of the American History class, and it's been my friend through a lot of interesting adventures. Now in my slightly more appreciative age I want to go back and see the old place again, as I remember lunch being really good. There were also a lot of old millstones on the other side of the road and some wonderfully picturesque stone walls.

So, in commemoration of HWL's birthday, I want to share a snippet of one of my favorite poems with you - Emma and Eginhard, the poem responsible for The Meaning and Mystery of the Rose. This is one of many passages of his I can recite by heart; Hopefully those of you who know me will understand from this clipping why I like his work so much...

When Alcuin taught the sons of Charlemagne,
In the free schools of Aix, how kings should reign,
And with them taught the children of the poor
How subjects should be patient and endure,
He touched the lips of some, as best befit,
With honey from the hives of Holy Writ;
Others intoxicated with the wine
Of ancient history, sweet but less divine;
Some with the wholesome fruits of grammar fed;
Others with mysteries of the stars o'er-head,
That hang suspended in the vaulted sky
Like lamps in some fair palace vast and high.

In sooth, it was a pleasant sight to see
That Saxon monk, with hood and rosary,
With inkhorn at his belt, and pen and book,
And mingled lore and reverence in his look,
Or hear the cloister and the court repeat
The measured footfalls of his sandaled feet,
Or watch him with the pupils of his school,
Gentle of speech, but absolute of rule.

Among them, always earliest in his place.
Was Eginhard, a youth of Frankish race,
Whose face was bright with flashes that forerun
The splendors of a yet unrisen sun.
To him all things were possible, and seemed
Not what he had accomplished, but had dreamed,
And what were tasks to others were his play,
The pastime of an idle holiday...

The Long, Long Trail -- Thoughts on the Evolution of the Identity of Armistice Day

Why do you lie with your legs ungainly huddled,
And one arm bent across your sullen cold
Exhausted face? It hurts my heart to watch you,
Deep-shadow'd from the candle's guttering gold;
And you wonder why I shake you by the shoulder;
Drowsy, you mumble and sigh and turn your head....
You are too young to fall asleep for ever;
And when you sleep you remind me of the dead.

-The Dugout, by Siegfreid Sassoon, from The War Poems, 1919

First off, Happy Armistice Day, everyone! I know most Americans are probably thinking, "Merc, where has your head gone? It's Veteran's Day, you ninny!"

And you'd be right. Today is, technically, Veteran's Day. Has been since 1954. But in 1919, per an order from then-president Woodrow Wilson, today was Armistice Day, because on the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month, peace was declared between the allied powers of England, Russia, France, and Italy and the Central Powers of Germany, Austria, the Ottoman Empire and Bulgaria. On the eleventh day of the eleventh month at the eleventh hour, people around the country would gather to celebrate the end of the war that was supposed to end all wars, the last gasp of a dying style of warfare and the first breath of the beginning of another.

Never again would the enemy be a man you could forget your differences with and play a game of soccer in no-man's land with, as with the Christmas Truce of 1914. Weapons could shoot further, more accurately, and with increased effect. You were removed from the man you were killing with shells and gas and later, napalm and missiles, weapons that would be fired from far off so that the effect was never seen by the man doing the firing. It became a common tactic to make your enemy into something less than human -- Jerry, gook, Victor Charlie -- so it was even easier to kill him.

Armistice Day used to be a day to celebrate peace -- that's what the original act to make it a national holiday stated. "A day to be dedicated to the cause of world peace and to be thereafter celebrated and known as 'Armistice Day'."

In 1953, someone decided we needed a day to celebrate veterans, and another act of Congress changed Armistice Day into Veterans Day. I agree that veterans have a right to be celebrated, for the sacrifices they make are great and worthy of remembrance, but did they have to take the one day out of the year that was designated to remembering the cause of peace?

You're probably wondering why I'm writing about this on a blog dedicated to writing. World War One was the Great War -- it inspired a generation of writers, Fitzgerald, Remarque and Hemingway among them, and dozens of poets who brought to life in words that remain with us today the horrors of what war could do. Sassoon, Owen, Brooke, and other less famous names wrote about what they saw daily in the trenches, and told thier families it shouldn't happen again.

"If in some smothering dreams you too could pace
Behind the wagon that we flung him in,
And watch the white eyes writhing in his face,
His hanging face, like a devil's sick of sin...
My friend, you would not tell with such high zest
To children ardent for some desperate glory,
the old lie: Dulce et decorum est
Pro patria mori," Wilfred Owen wrote bitterly in one of the most famous war poems of that era, "Dulce Et Decorum Est," or "It is Sweet and Right." Owen could find nothing sweet and right about war, and neither could many of his comrades. World War One was supposed to end all wars because it was brutal and too many good, young man died uselessly, trying to move lines yards at a time instead of miles.

So today, while you are celebrating the men and women who gave their lives, their fortunes, and thier sacred honor, to paraphrase the Declaration of Independence, to the cause of America, please take a moment to remember the Armistice, and remember that the goal of all wars should ultimately be peace, and the removal of the need for more conflict.

I'm going to end this post with one of my favorite poems by my favorite hometown poet, Carl Sandberg. I think it deals very well with the cause of peace, and the necessity of it. It is entitled simply "Grass."

PILE the bodies high at Austerlitz and Waterloo.
Shovel them under and let me work—
I am the grass;
I cover all.

And pile them high at Gettysburg
And pile them high at Ypres and Verdun.
Shovel them under and let me work.
Two years, ten years, and passengers ask the conductor:
What place is this?
Where are we now?

I am the grass.
Let me work.