intermittent montana mode

We are hitting the road and headed somewhere above the timberline. This is a photo from the last trip- taken in August. Skiers who want to say they skiied every month of the year come here. What they ski down, they hike back up. We'll be there to watch. 

See the dot of black 1/3 from the top of the snowfield? That is a skier.

I'm packing a camera, a journal, my favorite black pen. A winter coat and summer shorts, my favorite hiking shoes. Laptop and Blackberry are coming, too -- but when you don't hear from me you'll know the reason why. There are no towers here.

from koko to kwibi to speaking star

I've been working on a poem for the past year. Perhaps I should say the poem is working on me. It features a young girl not fitting in with society, running sidehill trails and sleeping in the forest beneath the stars -- wanting to speak deer, to speak star.

It's been suggested to me deer don't speak and stars most definitely cannot communicate. The little girl in me disagrees. Watch a fawn listen to her mother. Come between the doe and her fawn and you will realize mother is talking to her fawn, letting her know to freeze and when it might be safe to bolt. The little girl in my poem wants to know how that might feel to be able to tap into that language, that communication.

Yesterday I was working on this poem again, wondering how I might fix the poem so that those who don't believe in language being any other than human might be able to feel what is being shared in the poem. I didn't make any headway and put the poem away. But (!) today, I signed into Facebook and followed the long thread Amy Tan started on language. She has made plans to visit Koko the gorilla. Do you remember Koko? Click here to watch Koko read books and sign with trainers.

Watching Koko's sensitive imagination led me to the video of Kwibi. Kwibi was released back into the wild after spending his first five years with humans. His trainer tracked him down in the wilds for a reunion. Maybe the trainer was unprepared for Kwibi's emotions (?) -- I know I was not prepared. Now, I want to learn to speak gorilla.

shot of sixty years

Sunday Stills posts a prompt each week for photography. This Sunday the call is for history -- anything sixty or more years old. Last Sunday right before the tornado hit, we were running the pups along the river when we came across this fallen cottonwood. Bark and limbs are long gone but not the carved pledge. I'm sure it was meant to last forever -- the pledge and the carving. This reminded me of a poem  from my cynical years. You'll find it below this photo. Cynicism or love -- which lasts longer than sixty years?

Sometimes Becky Needs a Birch Canoe

I woke today, recalling a poem about Becky–
she maintained endless faith by taking long walks
to remind herself how winter circles
with killing frost, with quiet drifting snow;
that brown bears curl first, then settle
while crows caw over wheat field stubble.

              just as brown bears rise, just as robins nest

She’d break trail through last night’s crust,
slip through barbed wire fenced against the frozen
marsh. Along the bank of Driver’s Creek
she’d search for yet another note from him–
twined and twigged, a knotted braid
of regret and faith, dangling from a blade.

            carve me out another chance on the bark of this white birch

I imagined their tree: criss-crossed with pledges
of their love, but sometimes I’d find myself wanting
to step inside that poem–take that blade
from her naïve hand, ax the tree, build
a canoe and float her down river,
away from him, hoping
she’d come to her senses.

 
This poem was first published in Prick of the Spindle

you are here

Between where he sleeps and where he buys his milk, a woman begs for money. She's there every day but he doesn't always see her.

Yesterday, caught in his own trauma, he felt the magnitude of hers. When he handed her a five dollar bill, her hand touched his. His eyes filled with tears. 

Since then he's been sorting out what all this means. Everyone is so caught up in finding his own Einstein, he tells me, we don't learn from what is here.

through his rear-view mirror

He hadn't meant to crop from this photo the rearview mirror that framed it. He hadn't meant to drive past the herd of antelope until he had driven by and realized the view from his mirror was memorable.

Next year my father will be eighty years old.

A few months ago, he posted a message on the web, looking for more relatives. Over the past five or six decades, he has mapped a family tree of Irish relatives with roots which trace from here to halfway to the moon. The Irish side of the moon, of course.

Last time I was home to visit, he had just returned from an expedition which spent a rainy day tracking the tracks of Mullan Road, a road that led to the slaughter of seven hundred horses. He was anxious to get back to his computer -- he had email waiting to be read from someone new who was living somewhere else in the world and was related to the same great grandmother. Camera still strapped around his neck, he glanced into the kitchen where all sorts of his family (the leaves of his family tree) were preparing a turkey dinner. He shared a distracted wave and hello and retreated to his den.

 

aung san, tan and jackson

Aung San Suu Kyi

This photo reflects the serenity we could tap into when we quit trying to feel serene. Too often I think I will have a serene moment after the dishes are done, the lawn is mowed, the bills are paid, the money is earned, all my flowers grown, and every trespass blessed. And all my words written in chapter form.

Serenity can be found in chaos, with dirty dishes in the sink, without every flower bloomed. For Aung San Suu Kyi, it can be found under house arrest. A political prisoner of Myanmar (fka Burma) for 15 of the past 21 years, she speaks of courage and forgiveness. She lives free from fear, all the while under house arrest and restricted from seeing her sons who live in Britain. When we hate, we allow fear entry to our hearts. With her love for all she leads us towards no fear.

I might have finished writing the bio of Aung San Suu Kyi sooner had I not stopped so often to examine my own fears. At times I felt I might sprawl out on her sofa -- if she still had one -- to experience the flow of her wise words wash over me.

Facing fear and/or not facing fear is a familiar theme. Fear of grief tops the list for me. I used to practice for it all the time. Some say that is Way Irish. I've learned it doesn't help to practice our sorrows early. Last year at this time when a handful of my life's pieces were up in the air, I was writing the bio of Amy Tan, author of The Joy Luck Club. Tan had lost her best friend and editor but didn't lose her friend's wise words: grief is finding the real heart of a story. Grief is what helps us reach the center of humanity and the balance of life contained within.

Between the Tan and Aung San Suu Kyi projects, I was asked to write a serious bio of Michael Jackson. Last year at this time, he passed away before he could find that balance of serenity each of us pursue. Researching and writing Jackson's life story twanged on my heart. Clear away the debris of drama and the spectacular, one finds that center of humanity Tan found in her life. Jackson didn't live long enough to learn what Tan shares in her work. Jackson didn't live the life that could bring him the serenity Aung San Suu Kyi embraces all the while under lock and key. Finding the redeeming quality in each of us is core to Aung San Suu Kyi.

Morgan Reynolds Publishing has earned a fine reputation for its extensive collection of serious non-fiction it publishes for young adults. I'm rather pleased to announce the Jackson book, Spin, has reached the warehouses and bookshelves just this week. Tan's bio will follow, but meanwhile I've been putting the final touches on Aung San Suu Kyi's bio. Her country is gearing up for an election while she is under house-arrest. Perhaps if the election serves the junta regime well, her sentence might be commuted and she will be allowed to step away from her house. Each of these three people have touched my life this past year as I've written their biographies for a publishing company which feels there are solid lasting lessons to be learned when we read their books -- a touch of serenity, even.

Reztoration

Reztoration

I sailed skylines on a scrap of silk
until I lost my fizz. My sparkle.
He called it carbonation.

He found me with the bees; head
in hand, I was slumped with woe.
I called this my crash landing.

He filled an empty mason jar
with eleven Zs from the buzzing
harvest. Unweaving web

from forest shade, he mended
the way I flew. Call it Kizz, or
call it Rize. Our horizons blurred.



Previously published in Prick of the Spindle. Click here.

incident ahead

My routine route to and from work each day follows the tornado's Sunday path. Hot pink wind-proof signs and electronic reader boards flash warnings on the highway that cuts down from the cliffs that separate our area of town from the rest of town: Incident ahead.


After the incident was done incidenting, we had crawled out of the crawl space underneath my house -- dismayed to find so much hail damage to the five vehicles parked outside my home. While we were hunkered down in the hunker space (we renamed it while we were there), we texted and called those who matter the most to us. Once we reached everyone and knew they were safe, it was easier to ride out the storm. I had always heard about how loud a tornado gets right before it strikes, so as long as we didn't have to shout to each other, I assumed we were out of the tornado's path - which we saw through our kitchen window right before we grabbed the pups and cell phones and took shelter.

Once the tornado sirens ceased their wailings, I studied my son's body language after he came back inside from investigating the damage outside my home. Hard to lose out to a hail storm -- but then our phones began to ring. Friends wanting to know if we were okay and letting us know of the damage done just a few blocks from where we were. A best friend's home flooded with eight feet of standing water in the basement was the hardest to hear. A street's length of businesses and one of the largest structures in our state were destroyed when the tornado touched down. Miracles of miracles, no one was injured. It didn't take but a moment for each of us to realize what might have been if only. I watched my son's body language change into an expression of blessing. Pure bless is what we've since named how it feels to come so close to an incident.

we interrupt this program

straight up

When was the last time you looked straight up a flag pole? he asked. I thought -- what does it mean to live straight up?

Interview with a Kulak from 1937

she buries money in the backyard

never writes a check

even now

she closes her window during coffee talks
with her closest friend

Oma says no when I ask her to tell

me more

            but what about when

she scolded me

she knew the rumble

when we felt it, before we saw

the tank cross the Lockwood Bridge

searching for the Veterans Day parade
marching through downtown
how she twisted

my hand in hers

slipping half

her rosary to me

though her Bible sits in sunlight on her table

she remembers hiding

wrapping it in burlap beneath floor boards

her father’s boot
between it and a soldier’s gun

I hope the tank will come our way I said

she said we can’t tell

if that tank will turn and so
we shouldn’t stay.

        ***

Where to begin and how far to go before stopping in this post? The Schtamhalter is what my former in-laws call my son -- the only one left to carry on the family name.

When I was still married into this German family from the Ukraine, I pestered Oma, my then mother-in-law, with questions her children hadn't asked. Her answers speak of slipping off to the Turkish border only to be turned back; of a milk cow being traded in order to get the women off the cattle train in Poland; of family being shipped to Siberia and never heard from again.

Opa and Oma had the wherewithal (I would so much like to ask Oma now what the word for that would be) to hide in a root cellar for three weeks and then sneak off in a milk wagon filled with a handful of others willing to risk the escape to Eastern Europe in 1941. Their four years of living on the road as displaced people eventually resulted in sponsored passage to a small farming community in Montana where the father of my children was eventually born -- the only one of his siblings born in a free country.

This next part is best told if I fast forward through my married years to their son. One day I shocked everyone by walking away from it all. I felt like a traitor to all they held dear, this family of in-laws who had gone through so much. But I did what I did and hoped one day they might come to understand. Would they find a way to forgive? I admit to this being a nervous question I've carried in my Irish bag of worries and what-if heavy burdens.

A few weeks ago when my daughter and I were back home (while our beloved Schtamhalter was left behind to work the weekend and watch the pups for me.) I was invited to have pizza with the entire family, my daughter at my side. (Or, at my daughter's side was me.)

Oma is 85 now. Opa passed away eleven years ago. The family realizes Opa and Oma's story might go away unless someone writes it down. The night my brother treated me to a view of the American flag flying at full mast in half-darkness was the same night I was asked if I might write Oma's story.

I like to think the two go hand-in-hand. Some of us will do what we have to do in order to be free, though we have no way of knowing how things will work out in the end. And when is The End, anyways? Life is too short and too dear to go at it in any other fashion than  -- straight up.