Friday, December 30, 2011

Before I knew my name

Before I knew my name, my soul was touched by God.
Before my tongue had words, my soul was touched by God.
Before I drew a breath, before I had a face,
Before I nestled in my mother's blood,
My soul was touched by God.
Before my parents clasped their hands,
Before their parents suckled milk,
My soul was touched by God.
Before the rain and ground conjoined,
Before the moon could tend the tides,
Before the sea and land were struck,
Before divine light split the dark, my soul was touched by God.
Oh, my soul        forgive me for the times I do not know you.
For you have been faithful, steadfast       more enduring
Than time itself. 


Anne Lindley
anne.lindley.writes
8/2011

Friday, December 23, 2011

A Fine Year for Moss

In the end, Anne came to a decision. She chose the larger of the two stepping stones and moved on, snapping out of her frozen footsteps and on down the steep and treacherous path through the woods. She now passed through an untouched part of the forest. Lime green ferns laced the edges of fallen logs, Astroturf moss padded comfortable old stones. This moss was thicker and somehow longer than any Anne had ever seen. This was no delicate moss. It carpeted any hard rock or tree trunk it could settle on. It was, thought Anne, a fine year for moss.

Her destination was a particular point by a small brook, which she had discovered at the beginning of the summer. She rarely visited this spot because the path to it was a linear one. She preferred to walk in circles. Usually her hikes headed out from the day’s beginning in one direction and ended by coming home from the opposite direction. Straight lines bothered her. Retracing the steps she’d already taken was redundant. Anne found little grace in the shape of the back-and-forth walk.

But sometimes it wasn’t grace she sought. On some days, she sought solace. And little or no spot offered comfort and solace, and protection, on quite the scale as the little spot by the brook before which she now found herself standing, all underfoot slippery leaves and wobbly rocks forgiven as she stopped and breathed and let the water fall in on her ears, slowing her, soothing her so much, and so swiftly, that in an instant before she knew where she was, she wanted nothing more than to drop to her knees and then to her belly and then to curl up for a deep, deep nap there by the brookling brook.

To the right of the path, the water welled up in a small pool, into which the brook spilled from a series of rock-formed waterfalls. It was the pluck-pluck call of the water from the far side of the mossy rocks into this small pool that Anne found so mesmerizing. When she had first seen this spot it had been enough for her to stand on the path and admire the tiny waterfalls and crystal-clear pool, shrouded from the glare of high noon by the indigo hemlock fronds rising in a military stand on the northern flank of that damp and shaded slope.

But today she stood on the path and weighed the force of her urge to nap against the solid attraction of one particular rock higher up the water fall against the risk of the treacherous leaves that lay in between her fatigue and the rock’s attraction. She knew not what lay underneath those leaves. Just to sit, that’s all she wanted. To sit. To not think, for just a minute. To not think.

She toed the ground.

What would the scarecrow man with the orange jacket do? What would Rachel do? What would dear Richard do?

And so pretending she was anybody but herself, Anne Dexter stepped off the path.

It took her ten minutes, but she did reach the rock higher up. She was a careful person, that much was certain. But finally she attained her destination. She stepped onto the flat rock ledge, looking about her at the falling water, the hemlocks, the pale blue sky peeking through.

She lay down on the rock. Without thinking, she fell asleep

When she woke up just a short while later, she felt something different. Aside from her sore hip, she felt, just, different. She felt alone, most definitely, but also ready to not be alone.

From her spot, she could see a green that hovered just beyond the reach the of the hemlock trunks. The forest floor? She squinted. She dropped back her head. She widened her eyes. She took in her breath, lest it be stolen by what she saw.

What she thought might be the forest floor rising through the trees up a steep hill was no forest floor. It was a rock. The largest of all the rocks around. The largest of all the rocks she’d ever seen. A house was the first thing that came to mind. The rock was a big as a house. Maybe not Jim’s new house or Rachel’s old house, but possibly the size of her little middle-aged house by the Green River. And she hadn’t seen the rock at first because it was entirely grown over in a thick coating of heavy green moss. It was a fine year for moss.

There the rock was. There the rock had always been, staring her in the face. She had not even seen it. How could there be such an impossibly large rock just tossed here in a jumble of already very large rocks beside this wee little brook meandering on the far side of her feet.

For the first time in a long awhile, she found herself wishing Richard were with her. Her mate there, to help her to make her way across the ditches and sinkholes to the large rock, someone who could help her to climb the rock, to best it, to sit astride it.

As it was, she could get nowhere near it. She had her limits, even on this extraordinary day, that she did know.

And so she stared and stared at the rock, trying to memorize the heft and weight and looming impossibility of this moss-covered behemoth.

The path homeward, when at length she regained it, suddenly seemed entirely beside the point. There was now only one way to go and that was back where she’d come from. For the first time since she could remember, she would retrace her steps and redo the thing with pleasure and with grace. Never a word used much in her vocabulary, again had become a word she would begin to use more often.

Linda Stevenson
November 2011

Sunday, December 18, 2011

In Between



a space with wisdom
a space with green
I think every one of us
should get to know
our in betweens

ripe moss sinking
darker and darker
earth’s musk, weeping
like crippling desire
another root’s energy
beckoning a demise

still, the lime green shoot
creeps and slithers
the brownish moss
and weakened spirit
a reminder of the haunts
from past and future

it grows
chokes the old
and finally emerges
into the land
of in between

imagine yourself there
steady, what hurt you before
will always transpire to be
but you can refuse
it’s gripping return
and instead
discover
how you can be
the only connection
between the spaces

how long can you linger
in your in-betweens


Jenn Drumm
November 2011

Friday, December 16, 2011

Peaches

Robert leaned back from the well-scrubbed oaken table that took up the sunny side of the kitchen, his bad leg propped on a stool, cushioned by Katherine's folded shawl.  He watched her confident hands as they emptied the dirt-encrusted basket of its cargo of late-season peaches, building a rounded pyramid on the counter by the sink. Water splashed.  Then the afternoon sunlight began to flash against her knife, which quartered and pitted the peaches faster than his eyes could follow. Mesmerized, he sat motionless as the pile of damp golden pieces grew, until he could count the few whole fruits that remained: 6, 3, then one. The knife sped up as it pressed towards the end, chattering against the wooden board. A splashing sizzle from the stovetop drew Katherine away from the impromptu still life, but Robert stared fixedly at the heap of peach slices.

With a sharp metallic clang, Katherine dropped the huge lid she'd been holding while she surveyed the boiling glass jars.  The sound galvanized Robert, whose hands jumped to the table's surface of their own accord, cupping taut air as his finger strained towards the absent trigger.  His eyes roamed the kitchen, alert and wary, and he didn't hear Katherine resume her cheerful humming as she began to line the glass jars up on the clean white towel.


The splintered peaches gaped at him, sprawled helplessly in their massed pile. Each lay at an impossible angle from the next, as if unable to recall what it meant to be whole. Arms, legs, curved against the black ground, blue and khaki and grey pieces of uniformed waste.He felt himself teetering on the edge of a deep chasm, while an invisible tide drew away the sand beneath his feet, bit by bit, each departing grain disrupting his balance that much more. He could only put up token resistance as it eroded the ground on which he stood and the familiar internal contours of self. 

He squeezed his fingers around edge of the thick oak slab that formed the table's top, clutching until the sinews in his fingers stood apart from the white knuckles. He sent his index finger probing the board's underneath, seeking a sharp splinter that he could drive into his eager flesh, craving the pain that would anchor him in this kitchen, on the chasm's rim.   But his finger only caressed the satin-smooth grain of the ancient wood, generations old.

It belonged in this scent-infused kitchen, as he did not. The ripe, fruity smell of cooking peaches had spread through the room, fortified by the smoky tang of smoldering logs, all without Robert noticing.  He was startled to see that nearly a dozen jars of glistening round peaches now stood at the end of the table. Katherine stirred a final batch on the stove, her mouth moving.

"… and I've kept enough to make us a nice, large cobbler for supper. Your favorite." Her lips continued to move, as she turned her head to smile at him.  


With an internal scramble, he tried to find words that would not alarm her. He was spared the effort when a frothing hiss and sudden acrid smell warned her the pot was boiling over and she swung back to the stovetop and began to stir the mixture. He quivered, relieved that he need not force his throat to shape insubstantial words, but aware once again of the lapping tide.


To forestall it, he shoved himself back from the table, lifted his leg to the floor and fitted the splintering crutch under one arm.  He heaved himself up, stood in precarious balance for a few seconds, and then took one tentative step.

"I'll just go and check on Sophie's progress, then."  

He took her answering murmur as assent, and turned towards the doorway.  As he moved slowly down the hallway, he passed the pantry where columns of round tomatoes and pickled cucumbers already stood massed for the oncoming winter.  Their cheerful colors dizzied him, and a heady, yawning darkness opened in his mind.  He felt sand slipping away beneath him. Scrambling for purchase, Robert gripped the crutch more tightly and kept going, down the long hallway that led to the library. 


Liz Bedell
November 2011

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Mirabai at 513

When I was in the body of Mirabai
I would brush my long black hair every night,
108 strokes, one for each of the names
of my Beloved.
Down by the river where I filled my jug
I was overcome with longing...
the flowing of the river was the
moving of his hips was the wind
moving in the trees was his moving hand
on the nape of my neck.
The unmarried girls giggled and splashed
and their gold bangles gleamed in the sun;
I was silent with thoughts of Him.


During the monsoon season,
maddened by the peacock’s cry
in the courtyard, I scarcely noticed
when they tried to poison me.
with their black stares and
their lectures on duty, their
chapatis that stuck in my throat,
and the intolerable talk of marriage.
What do they know about marriage
who have never met Shyam?


Later I followed a band of beggars
out of the palace, out of the
stone gates; and never looked back.
All day the hills called to me, away, away,
and the grass was singing
his names for me, my names for him.
I walked for miles, enraptured
by the sudden sight of his smile
on the face of a simple cowherd boy--
oh no, I must have been mistaken,
I must be deluded again,
it comes from always thinking of Him.
the one who lives inside me.


When I was in the body of Mirabai
I knew nothing but this rapture,
and the pain of this rapture,
of the cracked red earth before the rains came,
I did not know it was possible to suffer so.
The peacock’s cry piercing my
heart in the dead of night,
my bed always on fire.


No one can say I wasn’t faithful,
who has lain on a bed of flames,
who has not known a single moment of
peace since you touched me that way,
who has kept on dialing the phone
long after you stopped taking my messages,
who has tried to commit suttee
a thousand times but always come back
to this poor solitary self.
Oh my midnight blue lover,
why didn’t you come back
to finish what you started?


When I was in the body of Mirabai
I did not have a smartphone
If I had I would have sent you texts to
die for; would have followed you on twitter
wherever you roamed, would have blogged
about your perfections, would have
worked out my perfect body in Curves
and seduced you on a tropical cruise. 
But I was a Rajasthani princess then
and I gave up everything for love.
You remember me--
your humble servant, Mira



Judith Hooper
November 2011

Monday, December 12, 2011

The Stars Are Either A Giant Word Hoard of the Universe or Venerable Ancient Monks

Into- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -- Automatic
The- - - - - - - -As
Taciturn - - - - - - - -Swallowing
Blue- - - - - - - -Face
Black- - - - - - - -Them
Sky- - - - - - - -Stars
Speak- - - - - - - -Child
Your- - - - - - - -Them
Piece- - - - - - - -Yellow
Stringless- - - - - - - -Winking
How- - - - - - - -Monks
We- - - - - - - -That
Were- - - - - - - -Glare
Meant- - - - - - - -Back
To- - - - - - - -At
PassOur
Through- - - - - - - -Gelatinous
Unafraid- - - - - - - -Monkey
- - - - - - - -Brains






Mike Biegner
November 2011

The Grand Gathering: Wednesday meets Monday

On December 7, a Grand Gathering of Nerissa's Wednesday and Monday writers came together at the Big Yellow House for food, festivity, and sharing our writing out loud. It was great. We've revitalized the Writing It Up in the Garden blog to keep up the connections we made that night and to cultivate the generous urge we felt to share our best work.


WIUITG writers! If you have something you've started in one of Nerissa's classes or workshops that you'd like to share with the rest of the Big Yellow World, send it to me at anne.lindley.writes@gmail.com and I will get it posted for you.


--Anne Lindley, blog consigliere