Metamorphosis

I’m writing screenplay number two in a trilogy of stories about an epic mythic world. I sketched out the major plot points in an outline and read it to my children for a bedtime story.

“So,” I said when I had finished, “what did you think?”

“Sea monsters can’t breath fire,” piped up the youngest, “What use would that be to them in the water?”

“Maybe when the sea monster hits land it can grow legs - then it could breath fire.” offered my middle daughter.

“Yeah!” said middle son, “and then when it is drowned in the flood at the end of the big battle, you could see it crawl out and become a chrysalis! Then it could show up later in the story...with WINGS!!”

“Oooo!” I replied, “a dragon with a metamorphic life cycle. I like it!”

“I think you need some more about the kid as he grows up,” added my eldest daughter, “He’s just kind of a baby and then the next thing you know he’s eleven and everything about him is surprising.”

“Yeah,” I sighed, looking around at my fast growing crew, “That is how it is all right.”

“So maybe at a couple scenes so we get to know him,” she finished helpfully.

There will have to be an authors note at the end that the story was co-written by all the Peterson children!

In a Chill Morning

Ever have you ever

In a chill morning

Early on the spring

Meant to go swimming 

But the warm bed held you

Just long enough 

So that after the alarm

You fell into a dream of water

stretching in every direction

breathing soft as a mermaid

wondering through caves 

of sun filtered coral and pearl?

Ever have you ever

Turned around slowly
Beneath the hot shower

In the grip of luxury

Even after you are clean

Putting off the stepping 

Out in a chill morning

Soaking in the heat

till you’d used up

all the hot water

then jumped out into a towel

and thought

tomorrow

I’ll go swimming 

tomorrow?

One Little Word 2012: WONDER

I finally chose one little word for 2012.  I first heard about it on a morning radio show - the idea of choosing a word to frame the coming year. It is a word to think about, to ruminate on throughout the year. It is also a web community. I don’t yet know how to embed links into a post, but you can find it by googleing “One Little Word” and it is hosted by Ali Edwards. I watched as many friends and    fellow bloggers chose wonderful words to think about this year. Linda at “Teacher Dance” chose the word ‘comfort’ and has written about it several times.  I just couldn’t find one, till today one word kind of found me.  A word popped into my head that has already shaped the first three months of the year and I would like to hang on to it for the next few.  It is the word ‘wonder.’ I encounter an experience of wonder almost daily in my work - the amazing things I learn about and with my students.  Each member of my family fills me with wonder, with their existence and their antics, both good and odd. I watch in wonder as my children juggle and ride unicycles and I also wonder why it is so hard for them to get the bath towels off the floor and onto the towel rack. I like that the word is both a noun and a verb. So that is my revelation for the day. My word for 2012 is WONDER!

Fox

Right out of Aesop’s Fables

A bright sleek fox 

Hopped gracefully to the top of our gate

And down into our fenced-in yard

The fox chased a rabbit

Stopped 

Contemplated the tall fence all around him

Then he lightly leapt again to the top of the gate 

Dropped down into the field and fled

Moral: What holds your prey may hold you too!

Lost Hour

Oh my gosh it’s nearly nine!

I forgot daylight savings time

All the family’s still a bed

An hour of morning quickly fled

Where did this magic hour go?

Did it dissolve with winter snow

This hour I seem to’ve found then lost

was it captured by the frost?

My love for time change would be stronger

If one hour could make the summer longer

Please Prove You Are Not a Computer

NAGVIn iturtac

Please prove you’re not a computer

ulopl gueseelo

I make mistakes on my own

ndleg spords

I change my mind

sitherel isersiber

I disagree

ednised ftstest

I am slow to process love

nciasp smencern

and grief

theauro dedise

I think therefore

tioneste rentmen

I am not a computer

Dreaming of My Father's Violin

Dreaming of the smell of my fathers violin

rosin and dust

sharp tang of a spare string

silent, I run my fingers 

across the blue velvet

On his desk

the waxy slice of agate that lay

long after his coffee mug was gone

strips of gold and umber

a tiny crystalled gap

between the layers

dawn creeps slow along 

strips of grey and cream

backing the fading twinkle of horizon lights

the house still asleep

on my computer

I play a boys choir 

singing christmas carols

even though it is March

while, out my dark window, 

a bus trundles lonely down the street

What are you reading? (one day late)

I’m reading a lot of inspiring encouraging blogs

in quick morning moments

I’m reading screenplay pages from my fellow students

on Fridays before class

I’m reading The Hobbit and bits of Beowulf

as I drift into sleep

I’m reading Luke, out loud 

with my daughters on the way to school (teen is driving)

I’m reading Seven Daughters of Eve

and

How the Irish Saved Civilization

and

Brian Green’s The Hidden Reality and Icarus at the Edge of Time

to keep up with my students

And cuddled on the couch before bedtime

with the wind outside whipping around the trees

I’m reading Wind in the Willows out loud

calling in the spring with my boys

An October Sestina: Garden

A sestina I wrote when our youngest was five months old...

Garden

An October blue-sky golden walk in my garden

Bare feet, cooling ground, warm sun on my skin,

Snapping basil stems, overflowing armloads crush up into my face.

The scent overwhelms.  Perfect tomatoes fill my hands

With sun soaked heat.  I rub off the crust

Of honest dirt and carry all inside dreaming of olive oil

The jar is empty.  I pad down cool stairs for more oil.

The kitchen table overflows with garden

Treasure.  Visions dance – something with a golden crust

Of cheese.  On the counter dough rises in a mound smooth as baby skin.

Curving it out of the bowl, I pull and stretch.  Husband puts his hands

On my shoulders.  I brush my eye and trace my face

With flour.  I wipe my hands and turn to face

Him with a kiss.  “If you want to help sit and oil

The pans.”  So he sits and works.  I shape and stretch.  He hands

Me oiled pans.  I slip in the loaves and go back out to the garden

for the eggplant I just saw from the window, purple skin

Gleaming.  Grilled, I think, with a little parmesan, to give it a nice crust.

The kids made sugared grapes – luscious rounds coated with a crust

Of sparkling hoarfrost.  I slice warm bread, drizzle garlic butter on the face

Of each piece and set it on the table.  Husband peels the wax skin

Off the cheese. I scrub the cast iron skillet then wipe it with oil

Till it gleams.  Husband opens the door to call the kids in from the garden.

They spill in with the slanting sun.  I tell them to wash their hands.

At my chair the sleeping cradled baby’s hands

Curl open like petals.  The sunlight halos his head and a crust

Of milk has dried on his cheek.  We look ‘round the table at our garden,

Full of impatient life, the evening sun glowing on each face.

Suddenly I see I live with heedless saints who, all unknowing, pour the oil

Of their spirits over my rough heart and salve my chaffed skin.

I take out the garbage and freezing rain pierces my shocked skin.

Husband clears the dishes while upstairs I fill my hands

With washrag and soapy child.  Husband creeps up and daubs my neck with bath oil.

Inside we thickly mulch each child with blankets, outside ice forms a crust

On muddy puddles.  In the warm bed Husband’s beard tickles my face.

Ice rain scatters and pebbles against the window.  I dream of the garden.

In my dream a new garden breaks through the crust

Of a bare earth.  Fresh oil like sunlight drenches my skin

And I lay the curves of my face in warm and tender hands

Heat

The Walk from the Pool to the Bike

Heat

Kisses my chilled skin

Crisp with chlorine

Legs swing and melt

Into each gravel crunch

Heat

Seeps in deep

Soaks the very marrow

Breaths come so full and smooth

One more and I could fly

Heat

Slips through my hair

Flutters the skirt

Loose around my knees

Heat

Drenches slanting shadows

Lilies soused with gold

Overarch my path

Heat

Bakes into cricket’s trills

Into the Cicadian waves

That break on my ears

Like the sea

Heat

Pulls out the languid lilt

Of the sunset robin

A moon is rising

Rich as cream and

Full to bursting

P.S.

This perfect summer moment is brought to you in memory of Spalding Gray and his never-ending search for perfect moments.

Cleaning the Yard on Palm Sunday

Lenten time is altogether spare

Long ago the pre-spring cupboard bare

Fasting till the greens popped up

And the chickens started laying

In the garden now I dig out winter’s must

Last year’s dead dissolved to naught but dust

Fat worms dark earth heedless sup

While robins trill a joyfully praising

I cast my eyes o’re wasted winter spent

Further back, through time that I’ve been lent

Spring sun warms my dissolute dust

Sublimates a soul exposed and bare

Helping the Kids with Homework

3^2 is 9 not 6

Radulae are tongues with teeth

Tall taller small smaller

D’Aulaires’ Myths

2^3 is 8 not 6

If you have more than one you have octopodes

Because Roman’s tried to learn Greek

Inside Outside Upside Down

Concave up and concave down

2^4 is 16 and so is 4^2

Grill chill spill fill

Say cephalopod five times fast

Now say teuthologist

Points of inflection are beautiful

Mr. Brown is out of town

Why was Kierkegaard so sore at church?

I have no teeth on my tongue

They are stuck to my jaw with gum

Snack pack silk milk

Brush your radula

Cuddled on the couch

Riddles in the dark on the way to hunt Smaug

Kiss, tuck, pray

That’s it for today

Writing a Poem Before Breakfast

A poem before breakfast

            Check the e-mail

            Write a quick note

            And another

A poem before breakfast

            Check facebook for birthdays

            Oops I’m late on a couple

A poem before breakfast

            Everyone else is still asleep

            Make some tea before I sit down

A poem before breakfast

            A half hour gone! Already!

            Like an old dog turning circles

            Before it lies down on the pillow

            I am finally settled to write

A poem before breakfast

On walking from the gym to my car at dawn

Dawn washed pearl grey

We have finally settled into spring

A robin’s lilting song

My Overactive Imagination

An homáge to Harold Monro and my Grandmother, Ruth

Nymph, nymph, what are your beads?

                                    I am eight years old living between

                                    Manhattan and mountains

Green glass, goblin.  Why do you stare at them?

                                    By all appearance an ordinary

                                    schoolgirl but I frighten my little friends

                                    ‘cause I know

Give them me.

                                    How to find real fairies in the garden

                                    flowers, how to find signs proving the

                                    frost witch has touched the maple leaves

No.

                                    My Grandmother reads me poems

                                    while I draw or comb my fingers through

Give them me. Give them me.

                                    My secret treasure box containing frosted

                                    bits of sea glass, green and blue, broken

                                    rhinestones and nuggets of gold and quartz

                                    my grandfather dug from the mountain’s heart                                            

No.

                                    Any small thing catches my eye –

                                    this could be it: the strange nickel that grants

                                    wishes, or the pebble from space that is really a

                                    telephone to the next galaxy, but no

Than I will howl all night in the reeds,

Lie in the mud and howl for them.

                                    I build goblins into the murky reeds of a drainage

                                    ditch and frighten myself while I search for

                                    young dragons                                                                     

Goblin, why do you love them so?

                                    I find a crack in the rocks by the trail and believe it

                                    a door into another world.  Isn’t that how the stories

                                    always start?

They are better than stars or water,

Better than voices of winds that sing,

Better than any man’s fair daughter,

Your green glass beads on a silver ring.

                                    How can this compare to reruns of Leave it to

                                    Beaver? Or Mayberry? My friends running home

                                    to canned laughter and TV trays

Hush, I stole them out of the moon.

                                    I’ll trade these any day for a journey to the moon,

                                    fishing with Winken Blinken and Nod, with

                                    Captain Kirk and Bilbo Baggins

Give me your beads, I want them.

                                    My Grandmother reads me poems,

                                    I hunger for them

No.

                                    Why do you plague me with grammar and spelling

I will howl in the deep lagoon

For your green glass beads, I love them so.

                                    My Grandmother reads me poems

Give them me.  Give them.

                                    Why do you burden me with

                                    the five-paragraph essay

No.

                                    My Grandmother reads me poems

April Ice

Another three minute poem:

On the pre-dawn drive to the gym I determine not to complain

Friday is April but ice crackles and I walk with duck like care

Ah! It will melt by noon and I won’t have to water the yard!

Looking through Hubble in 3D

Three Three-line Three-Minute Poems:

Stars

Romantic inspirations twinkling above

Tight Embraces fusing elemental compounds

Weight increasing to an explosive iron nova

Galaxies

Dervish whirlpools in the swift dance of eons

Sucking stars into their crushing chocolate centers

Spread along the bubbled edges of sea foam

Life

Chaos theory miracle of spontaneous appearance, or seeded, or created,

A mystery floating through nets of space and time

Encased in the violent beauty of our blue jewel

Dark Leprechauns

My first attempt at a book spine poem, this one entitled:

Dark Leprechauns

Just in case the picture is hard to read:

The bad beginning

Outcast

Breathless

Deep survival

Holes

Thinking in pictures

Disposessed

Gnomes

Speak

Where children sleep