Common Threads

 

A Very Mary Variation

326RL

it was a voyage just beginning 

they traveled like a matched team 

landscapes and moments flowing together 

a quick-falling, white-veined stream 

straw hillsides, citron and butter-colored 

a hint of paradise 

like nothing you’ve ever imagined 

a miracle is taking place

Lines found in and borrowed from the poems of Mary Oliver, in this sequence:

“Goldenrod, Late Fall”

“The Snakes”

“Clapp’s Pond”

“The Dipper”

“Goldenrod”

“Am I Not Among the Early Risers”

“Humpbacks”

“This Morning”

 

first of all, I do not want to be doing this 

 

A Very Mary Variation 

Today I’m celebrating that feeling of fall with a mashed potato poem taken from the lines of some of Mary Oliver’s other poems

The Lust of the Season

in the fall, the black bear carries leaves into the darkness 

the crows puff their feathers and cry 

the blue of the sky falls over me 

and the moon rises so beautiful it makes me shudder

the trees stir in their leaves 

the goldenrod are all wearing their golden shirts, 

the shawl of wind coming

the reckless blossoms of weeds 

the cranberry bogs 

the rich fragrance of cinnamon and fulfillment 

the morning air, the possibilities 

the lust of the season 

have you ever been so happy in your life?

These lines were borrowed, in sequence, from the following poems:

“Some Questions You Might Ask”

“Entering the Kingdom”

 “A Meeting”

“The Sweetness of Dogs”

“When I Am Among the Trees”

“Goldenrod, Late Fall”

“On thy Wondrous Works I Will Meditate”

“The Kitten”

“The Truro Bear”

“In Blackwater Woods”

“Three Poems

For James Wright”

“Spring”

“Goldfinches”

 

A Very Mary Variation

Happy October! As we draw near to the night of all things spooky, today’s poem is inspired by the witches of Macbeth by Shakespeare and is a found poem I call a Mashed Potato poem, using rearranged and borrowed lines from the poems of Mary Oliver

The Witchery 

while the dead wind rises

I kneel before the fire

stirring with a stick of iron

I’ll cook the leaves briefly

and eat of their mealiness

mostly frogs -but  don’t worry-

it doesn’t have to be

the oaks and the pines

I am not even surprised that I can do this

the witchery of living –

a madness of delight; an obsession

my heart dresses in black and dances

Thank you, Mary, for these and all poems(in order of appearance):

“Winter at Herring Cove”

“Oxygen”

“Oxygen”

“Honey Locust”

“Honey Locust”

“Praying”

“When I Am Among the Trees”

“North Country”

“Franz Marc’s Blue Horses”

“To Begin With, the Sweet Grass”

“Wild, Wild”

“After Reading Lucretius, I go to the Pond”

 

https://youtu.be/XEKR5pYlLl0

 

A Very Mary Variation 

 Here’s a QUADRUPLE Golden Shovel using four intertwined lines from Mary Oliver’s poems to form a vertical scaffold. They appear like this prior to my own writing (read each line from top to bottom, small devices turned sideways):

In         Over       She         All

The      The         Was        The

Robes  swamp   singing   way

Of         And         Her       To

The         The        Death    the

night     darkness    song    grave

Reading the six word lines vertically, the four lines come from the poems “Night Herons,” “White Heron Rises over Black Water,” “Red,” and “Honey Locust,” in that order. 

Robes of Resfeber

in mourning over her plans she anticipated with all

the heart of the adventurer she was, she cast the 

robes of resfeber into the swamp and began singing the way

of the solivagant and free-spirit; her path to

the trouvaille of the unplanned journey marked the death of

the

night cloaked in darkness and buried her song of despair deep in an unmarked grave

 

Open Season

While the youngest apparently slept in, the middle and eldest texted with their mother early one morning following a night of storm spinoff tornadoes and wrapping up the weeks of circus clown and flyswatter debates. 

The middle was watching a tale as old as time with his own middle and shared a quick video clip of his daughter (her niece, my granddaughter) watching as wolves chased Belle through the snowy woods. 

There are real dangers in the woods, the sister says, after a moment. Just yesterday, she’d seen a video of a man sitting on the forest floor. A rattlesnake slithered up behind him and even onto his lap for a minute. She thought she might die. 

Her brother says he has seen bunches of snakes, even a rattlesnake bigger than his bicep. 

She says she has a healthy respect for snakes but doesn’t want a run-in like that. She remembers being on the phone with her brother one time when he shot a cottonmouth. He’d killed three water moccasins in the same place that year. 

She says it sounds like a breeding ground of death but confesses it isn’t the noisy rattlesnake or the water moccasin that really scare her as much as the copperhead that quietly blends in. 

Her brother says he saw a copperhead a few days ago, shortly after sending us all a video of an alligator he’d seen raised up on all fours crossing the road to the other side of the swampy wetland. Yes, he agreed, at least those big rattlesnakes can be spotted from a distance. 

We came across a copperhead in the barn under the lawn mower over the summer, I told them. Good thing it was docile as copperheads go, I added, since the one who found it is usually looking up for bees and not down for snakes. He’d called for me to identify it – which was an easy call with its classic Hershey Kiss pattern right down both sides. 

A guy the eldest went to school with posted a video of a copperhead the other day and it reminded her of those pictures people post labeled “find the copperhead” and she has to scrutinize the picture carefully to see it. She says she believes it’s currently baby copperhead season.  

I remind them both that baby copperheads have bright yellow tails and will strike at anything. 

She says she knows this about the tails and also knows they can’t control their venom. 

I point out that they are like  people that way, except for the yellow tails. 

The middle asked about everyone’s plans for the holidays as we concluded our group text, while the youngest apparently slept in….

 

A Very Mary Variation

A Mashed Potato poem

Featuring borrowed lines from Mary Oliver and placed in a re-arrangement to form a new poem

More than Bones 

ordinarily I go to the woods alone

where the owl lives and sometimes calls out

around me the trees stir in their leaves

the moon, in its shining white blouse, rises

while the dead wind rises

don’t think I’m not afraid 

you wouldn’t believe what once or twice I have seen

there was a strange fluttering bird, high above, disturbed, hoo-ing

he was singing his death song

something came up out of the dark

the darkness grows and is filled with crooked things

the old ghost stood under the hickories 

a plump, dark lady wearing a gown of nails

with a sound like hysterical laughter –

my heart was pounding

death waits for me, I know it

there is a graveyard where everything I am talking about is, now 

it’s more than bones

New Arrangement taken, in order, from

these poems:

“Tides”

“It was Early”

“When I am Among the Trees”

“You are Standing at the Edge of the Woods”

“At Black River”

“The World I Live In”

“Flare”

“Red”

“Sometimes”

“Six Recognitions of the Lord”

“The Arrowhead”

“Porcupine”

“Spring”

“May”

“Sometimes” 

“Flare”

“To Begin With, the Sweet Grass”

 

A Very Mary Variation –

A triple (yes, 3- stranded) Golden Shovel poem using these lines vertically positioned beginning/middle/end from Mary Oliver’s poetry:

12-word lines from Invitation:  “oh do you have time to linger for just a little while” and “just to be alive on this fresh morning in this broken world” and from Sometimes:

“Instructions for living a life: Pay attention. Be astonished. Tell about it.”

Game Changer

Oh, please just shred all the instructions! 

Do we really need to have directions for 

you and me to be playful at living? 

Have we not been strategically alive? Has there been a 

time we’ve needed the playbook on how to spin a life? 

To advance to joy, this move has no banker to pay.

Linger over steaming fresh coffee, find attention 

for gratefulness each morning, and be 

just and fair in turn. Stay astonished –

a game changer in this round is to tell 

little-known secrets to heal the broken,

                                     to move freely about 

while chuckling at this checkerboard world with 

                                     both of us in it!

 

A Very Mary Variation- today’s double golden shovel poem is taken from two lines of Mary Oliver’s “Benjamin, Who Came From Who Knows Where.” 

“I also know the way the old life haunts the new” and “in his low-to-the-ground chest I can hear his heart slowing down.” Turn small devices sideways to see the vertical lines at the beginning and end. 

A Heartbeat Down

I wanted to let a dog in,

also to change that hellishness of his.

Know that I wanted a non-shedder, low-to-the-ground,

the kind with an innocent face and proud chest –

way off script I went, though, boy did I! 

The one I picked’ll open a spontaneous whoopass can –

old memories plague dogs, I hear.

Life has a way of summoning his

haunts; seeing it’ll rip open your heart:

the head lowers, ears fold back, tail tucks in, gait slowing.

New rescues always seem a heartbeat down.