One lovely second

the loveliest second

one second it was but the sound of the tock
without voices within or a whirring machine
or autos to plow the contiguous street
nor did the windswept tree take a chance
(but silently cast its silhouette dance)

one second more it'll come if i wait
for the train-blare of warning or cat whine for feed
another will come once school buses empty
traffic will slow as the children lie sleeping
devices go hushed and the mister tries dreaming

then the tock i will hear filling rooms as it may:
the loveliest second of noise in my day

Kenn left the house today with the littlest while the others were at school.  For just a moment, things were still, in the house and out.  Hearing the ticking of the clock seems a rarity in the middle of my days, so I celebrated with a poem.

It wasn't intended, but I haven't posted here in ten months.  I have no intentions of publishing more/less hereafter.  Goals like those can be helpful, but at times they just impede.  I do have a new website I'm working on, slowly.  If it ever goes public, I may not post here again.

There's something lovely in that, too.

New again

Last year was a big marker year for our family, and entering the new in 2014 brought such joy.  It was in the major transitions of 2013 that I got to feeling dizzy with LOTS of frustration and at least some fear mixed in.  We weren't just entering a new chapter, it felt like starting all over again.  This, despite the evidence that the changes were actually leading to a wonderful culmination of the last ten years.

I confess I still have days, every week it seems, where I just cannot see that evidence!

But back to the story... I was spilling to my Hub this struggle with all the newness, when he acknowledged so simply,

"It's hard to be in a new place."  

That's all I needed: the permission to say it is hard.  It is normal/acceptable/human/forgivable to struggle to believe and stay in the moment.  I wrote down my circling thoughts as a poem, including the fantastical things that happen in my head when the Now becomes uncomfortable.  Months later, I reformed it into the villanelle below.  It reads very specific to me.  I hope some of you can relate enough to find permission, and then be freed to face the disbelief.

New again is still the place
where I smile for the hope
but then run a moment later

to where it’s long been cold.
For I’d rather be there, then.
Not new again, displaced.

What if today is just mistake 
I let our yesterdays take me
running only moments later

to where I'm dizzy, unrequited,
mistaken over you, wishing
new then was still my place.

Then back again, though not far
off, I still find hope is hard and
cannot run in moment’s laughter.

I do mistake what is today
to mean our dreams are now erased,
that being new in another place
bodes us run alone hereafter.

I still believe

As our pastor taught last week from the scriptures on the valley of dry bones (Ezekiel 37), part of me wanted to jump up and cheer while another part ached, weary.  It was more than a year ago in the prayer room when the same verses were spoken over our community.  You shall live . . . Come O Breath . . .  know that I am Lord . . . But we've been bearing burdens of that hope much longer than a year (and baring all at times) to see what's dead here come back to life.
I still believe.

There's a young man from our town who was running from police for weeks.  He's been arraigned, accused of murder.  While he was missing I prayed ardently for him and wrote the poem/lyric below.  At some point in those petitions, my mind went to the disbelief of the sisters of Lazarus when Jesus had failed to save their brother from death.  To them, it was over.  To whom would it not be?  I imagine for some this murder case is a closed one as well.  GUILTY - no matter what the law says about maintaining innocence and not to mention the redemption and new life in which many of us claim to believe.

Jesus' reply to Mary and Martha was to share in their sorrow without leaving the loss as the final word.  He asked the question,

"Did I not tell you that if you believed

you would see the glory of God?"
(John 11:40)

And then he brought Lazarus back from death.  Mary and Martha showed disbelief but there came resurrection anyway!

It is belief in the Risen One, the Conqueror, that is my resolve.  It must be.  When nobody seems to get the Dream.  When everything around me looks a lost cause.  When I've seemed to have lost my own way in the valley.  I'll not let death have the last word.  I'm gonna tell stories of hope. 

May we see Your Glory.
 

On My Mind

Face in the news
Face on my mind
Face in my memory from days before

Of a kid on the run
Of a kid in my mind
A kid I remember who stayed next door

If you're to blame
Or whether you're blameless
Neither will tell the half of the story
The one about children still being brought up
to do nothing less and expect nothing more
Than carry on curses handed on down
in cruelty, dejection, futility, turmoil

Who will speak life
Who will keep hope
Which are the stories we choose to tell

If we breathe hope
If we speak life
We follow the call of Ezekiel

Awaken the stories of children in families
who want nothing less but expect what is more:
To break every curse and snuff out the cruelty
That all see in your face their own son or brother

Face in the news
Kid on the run
Blameless in every mind you become

Until it is time

forty each

one of them says

greeting the passerby like

he's known her before

he

just

slows

goes

while i pull

weeds and wonder not

about dirt and indiscretion

but how it is i know

yet stay

sometimes

the ones behind

the lattice weaved i must leave 
till they've grown

so
go

slow

then 

each is known

before reaching to be pulled
out of dirt and in discretion

Gardening one day last year, I overheard an exchange maybe fifty yards away between a female pedestrian and a driver.  Quickly I was conscious of its nature: the young woman and her friend were marketing.  Selling themselves.  For as long as we've lived in this dubbed-destitute place, there are still moments that stun.  The real world of the desperate is right here.  (It's everywhere, mind you.) The cruelest acts are lauded for amusement and the most innocent or vulnerable are handled with contempt.  I am thankful in these moments that I'm still disturbed.

Interrupted.  Stirred up.  Dismayed.

On another day on our old property, I decided - once and for all - to get at a menacing vine.  I started digging to reach the roots, pulling it foot after foot and yard lengths, only to see that the further I dug the thicker and deeper it grew.  Still, I worked: heaving, chafing hands, bent in affront.  I never did rid the root.  Somewhere in the fight I had the picture of a powerful, unseen enemy.  It symbolized perfectly certain things that we'd discerned in our midst at that time, and it has since served me repeatedly.  Whether on individual or universal scales, it's the systems of earth and sky that we battle against here.  Not people. 

Jesus used metaphors for teaching the truths of how this all holds together.  One parable depicts the kinds of soil that determine whether seeds take root and thrive and finally bring a bounty.  In another, there's a story of an enemy who's sown bad seed and the workers have asked to pull the resulting weeds.  The landowner replies, "No; for while you are gathering up the tares, you may uproot the wheat with them.  Allow both to grow together until harvest."  Let them go.  Until it is time.

I think some weeds aren't weeds at all but life existing where it shouldn't be. 

Two weeks after the soliciting incident, I was tidying up the yard again and couldn't quite reach the saplings growing wildly under my porch.  Even though they're trees and I love trees, they're unsightly and destructive when they grow under there, behind the lattice.  I know now from experience that if I let them go, they'll grow long enough to be easily grasped and drawn out.  The metaphor returned to mind.  How often I wish I could just pluck others - neighbors, family, strangers - from the entangled messes they live in, in the dark.  I'd like to act quickly, forcefully, but my attempts to reach into those places in such a manner would and do prove futile.  (Not to mention the cuts and bruises that might ensue as when I try squeezing my arm through that lattice!)

I may feel disturbed.  I do get dismayed.  If I wait, though, wait on the Lord in supplication, I do get shaken up to hope.  I keep up with gardening, and I beckon with power in prayer for the day when seasons have proven to mature it all.  Many tomorrows may pass, but I pray that even these seeming weeds are found to be seeds that fell on good soil, longing in the end to be pulled from the dirt, from the dark.

-------------------------------------------------

And this is for
anyone feeling they're in the dark
wondering about the ground they're in.








 

Taking stock

Today the world ponders the life and passing of Nelson Mandela.  And this holiday season as a whole can bend one toward reflection.  As well as burden.  In my life, it's been November where I've taken special notice since it holds for me powerful firsts and lasts, deaths and births, redemptions and travails.  Yet there's no wonder, with winter on its way (at least in our hemisphere), that anyone would take this time to take stock, store up.

I was remembering our car wreck of 1995 when I started this poem last month, already thinking on the mysteries of dying and living, when I learned of another unexpected death.  A dear soul left this world at the age of 38.  Just as his impact and that of Mandela do not end here, today, this poem could conceivably keep on going, no matter the number of Novembers I have to come. . .



Not very often now it'll flash in my brain I could have died that night but I was carried through
the force through dusk through the trauma through to dawn and I have not tried to count
the dawns I have been carried into since since I don't think it's a debt I could carry

Why am I given what others are not or do I not have what's theirs and is it better than life life
is so strange I said when she told me of some betrayal - or payback - maybe order made of
something and I beg again if I might see into what seems disorder but then catch myself

Are they really caught up into immunity, purity, ceasing of insanity insanity that's knowing
they are in fact more sane than this whole damned existence of dawns and dusks and force
is it that will carry them through trauma to something better than any could calculate

November you've had such darkness I have very often thought was dispelling through what's
been given me since that night but today you are carrying a richness of neither dark nor light
alone but of both and all all things made vivid, palpable, if only in flash, invigorated dusk

In my cup

In My Cup

Earl Grey and later ginger breakfast

but neither was first choice

I only think I have to drink my habit
because it's habit to think it

So I told myself: you'll have the tea

and poured it in a cup of no import

Except my breaking from a norm might be
important as making coffee essential to my morn

Then I let myself think on more
than drink: on death and life because of death

and when it will touch me closer with time
or even too close regardless of time 

How death does not come and go

it's all around and through and
how we might never choose to free
death if it was ours to choose

So I think to myself: I'll make the choosing
into habit when the cup is mine to fill
and I'll choose to drink what's in the cup
when the filling can't be mine

--------------------

I wrote this poem a week ago, when our local community had seen two tragic car accidents in a matter of days.  Dying was on my mind, as well as what we do with our freedom, even in the mundane.  My uncle had also been admitted to the hospital two days before and then lost his fight with cancer the following day.  Three others have died in accidents since.

Noah, me and 40

Reaching this age used to be embarrassing.  At least that's how adults seemed to celebrate turning forty.  I'd like to think I witnessed in them some kind of maturing into humility.  It felt more like fatalism.  Be sure, I've got the wrinkles and grays and "such" but those changes chisel away at pride in a different way.  They don't usually leave one grateful or in wonder.

One way I've celebrated reaching forty is recognizing it's come at this other juncture in my life - during a sabbatical and transition in work.  I get to enjoy all the changes, all together.  No sarcasm.  In this time of rest, I get to remember how truly abundant my life has been, and becoming forty becomes an honor.  I'm also left deeply grateful when I remember I cannot give this life nor take it away. . . .

Which brings me to Noah.  And wonder.  God decides he'll do away with an overwhelming majority of his own creation.  And Noah?  He gets to ride out the catastrophe in a boat.  Why? He walked with God. Go back about 500 years, when Noah is given his name, which means he will comfort.  Sure enough, he was found to be a comfort: to the grieving heart of God.

Can we imagine it? The One who can and did release all the waters of existence to destroy mankind: could he have found rest in one man? The waters recede, life starts new.  God finds pleasure in Noah once more and decides to make a covenant with all people, for all time, declaring:

“As long as the earth endures,
seedtime and harvest,
cold and heat,
summer and winter,
day and night
will never cease.”

 

It's as though God himself found a new reverence for life.

This poem could be about life, about the ark and flood, or any time, any man.  It's also about me and my forty.

forty days 

forty nights
forty years 

forty gifts

one today
for every day
forever rain pouring down

pouring out pouring in 

from the depths bursting forth opened gates 

flooding up to the heights lifted high

on we walk with our God

favor found above the ground

Crying

It goes without saying, I've not blogged in some time.  I have written poems because they just come when they like, if I let them.  When today was proving quite difficult, I recalled a poem that I wrote last May when I was feeling hurt and vulnerable and cried floods. Confession: this day really looks no better from my present angle.  Nonetheless, I got a little gift again. In the rain.

bursting cloud

pouring out

what heart

would dare 

to spill if voices didn't

say the fault was mine

every drop of rain

tells truth from lies

wound seen

hole filled

showers ease

ache relieved

for finding ally

in the sky

~ c. l. atkinson

make room

something i'm most thankful for this week - besides central A/C - is my renovated bedroom in this old house.  it took more than half a year to complete it, but it is now THE most beautiful spot in our home.  and the spot i'm obviously (yet happily) confined to for some hours during this hot spell.

we still wait for Baby.  and i've begun reading another book, one about the writing life.  the first pages inspired me to pull out a memory and mark it with a poem.

rooms

this week i have
spent in my new room
newly remade
my oasis for days
and these, scorching
outside
the first i have 
ever designed altogether
in adulthood
though many
i drafted in 
early years -
did you have
barbies who lived 
on armchairs 
with hankies for blankets
and tissue box
beds?

it was wooded 
outside that was
drawing board
life-size
where trunks of tree 
were corner posts
for walls marked 
off by roots
exposed
stumps and logs
made sitting places
brier and branches
divided spaces
each with carpets
lush moss or
dried leaves


sister and cousins
or kid-down-the-street
would be well into
role-play
as i'd stay
in visions
adding new touches
to newly made rooms
just as inside
i stay
and envision
new touches to make
to this painted room
a luscious color:
dry leaf


- c. l. atkinson

* * * * *

sharing this post with 

day five

 

piety's strain

trying

to sift out

disappointments

You waited till i found

letdown wasn't put out

and put down striving
till i found You waiting

this day was one peppered with frustration over my bed rest orders, despite the fact that i had the privilege of being so "confined" in a beach town at a lovely b&b. with the frustration came guilt, then the foolishness of trying to right myself for the (hidden) fear that God was shaking his head at me and my whining. he is not so, mortal with ploys. the truth about him looks more like this (Isaiah 30:18):

     the LORD longs to be gracious to you;
          he rises to show you compassion.
     for the LORD is a God of justice.
          blessed are all who wait for him!

* * *

poem written by c. l. atkinson

bonnie beams

i see 

who she is -

though you may

mistake

deeming fake

the heartlight

perpetually shown -

 maybe because as her child

i relate

for the cynics

in us

are not left 

overgrown

this little poem is part of an early Mother's Day exercise. written about my beautiful, childlike mom, it relates other things, too - like, how i'll rock the boat of others' perceptions, pointing out who or what they may have misunderstood.  this quality often tops my list of Jesus' best.  (don't get me started on how missed he is.) to his credit alone, i have even learned to jump in more, to let my own vessel be tossed about.

* * *

poem written by c. l. atkinson

what grates on you?

sand is in my bed
it was too late
to bathe little girl
when we were back from the boardwalk

night's sleep broken
it is summer
and it's maybe the fortieth
time because of coughs
and stuffed noses inside
or laughing singing screaming out

tonight's been a bit
of it all
even the cops showed
then a lull came over
maybe prayer was answered
so i climbed back in

with sand in my bed
two hours later
little girl whimpers
and the voices are back by my window

tonight is one of those nights. it's nearly 5 a.m. and i've been awake for a couple hours, even though i actually went to bed early. summer is wild on our block, any time of day or night. in fact, sometimes the same people who wake me at two are still awake when i'm watering the flowers at seven. but this is how i came to write another poem.

i got out my journal to think through my feelings about the rudeness that woke me. that wasn't my first reaction, though. my first was to go downstairs to see who and where they were. i turned on my awfully bright porch light but it didn't phase them. after a bit they did move on, i wrote a bit, the police stopped by, and it got quieter. i went back to bed only to have a poem pop in my head!

i do identify with the poet, naomi shihab nye:

"the things that cause you friction are the things from which you might make art."

can you relate?

a poem instead

i have wanted to capture with words some of what we experienced in northfield. nothing has come to me yet. this is where writing can be both frustrating and fun, predictably unpredictable.
thanks to my mom, however, tonight was full of the subject of writing because we watched Inkheart (i, for the first time) and followed it with readings from silverstein's Falling Up.

by the time i got home it was past midnight and i had drunk tea with caffeine. i knew if i went to bed i'd be back out in no time, because the bug was itching me to write. i came to the computer to catch up on correspondence first, and that's where inspiration came. not regarding our fabulous 10 days with the 24-7 prayer family, it's a poem more about days long ago, to some extent. here i credit shel's poetic style and, undoubtedly, the oh-so-lovely randomness of a friend. thanks, bailey.

here's my latest, at this latest hour.

omnibus poem

my school was so special
it drew from all over
families who treasured
a place of high caliber
that is, a place with
morale where a dad or a
mom could be sure
that their daughter
or son was safe from
the lure of lewd words
and a bully as pal
the grip of worldly teachings
and some new-fangled preaching

but i'll save that subject
for another debate
let's talk about how i
became second-rate
see, my school had buses
don't know how few or
more, just know that i
rarely stepped foot in their doors
my house it was tiny
(donned tarpaper forever!)
for years we hardly had
two coins to rub together
but it wasn't this that
caused my dissension
it was that my house sat
outside jurisdiction

doomed to carpool
every day, every year
every grade i attended -
all thirteen, i do fear -
this put me in a class
of a different kind
i wasn't a "bussy"
the elite in my mind
elite because everyone
else got to ride on
the bus that was greener
than on the carside
see what my school taught
so special they say
it drove me to envy
and label, not pray
not memorize stories of
saints long ago
just painted a picture
of the world we all know
where this one is in
that one is out
those have no value
these have the clout
oh! how did i get here
debating again
what was good or was bad
about my institution
i guess it goes back
to the one thing i've
found - no matter where
you are schooled or in
what home you dwell
or who your friends are
come heaven or hell -
everyone's got certain
voices within and particular
ways we are wound

i thank Goodness my school
didn't break me or make
me, the car didn't kill me
the bus doesn't wield me
there is much more hidden
deeply inside that's to
credit for both
my purity and pride
- c. l. atkinson

eyewitness

sounding out story
unlikely glory found
on a street disrepute

where fists pounded rage
provoking blade and thrown
bloodied shirt to the dirt

i saw the hand hold the piece
cracks unleashed
nonchalant to the air
and i saw the Hand choke back
with resolve any harm
meant for here

more of the story
finds you next day
clearing dross from
the derelict lot down the way
your hands became four
became six and then eight
ten or twelve took the space for clean
fun being missed

next day came force
with another ten, twelve
stretching out weapons in charge
charged with offenses a few
put away but root-stretched
abides the illicit

i still witness hands
bent lawless and listen
to voices hurl hate
and i still expect the Hand
that is boundless to heal
and to heave away pain

sounding out story
soon coming glory found
on a street wholly new

- c. l. atkinson

the monsters to fear

i saw the photos and read the story of our vandalized walking path. here's what most "burns me up," as my dad would say. the destructive act? the fire starters themselves? no, i think it's the foolish insolence of online responders. (note to self, once again: it is best to avoid reading such comments!)


cross over

found out the bridge was burned
real bridge, real fire
some one dared destroy
some thing we all enjoyed
public property
how uncivil

how uncivil
public commentary
slander pointing fingers
to find imagined solace
in eluding inner vandals
whose bridges we've tried to burn


*poem written by c. l. atkinson for random acts of poetry

why not?

i haven't included any poems here. however, poetry is summoning again because i've been neglectful. again. this month is national poetry month, so why not include one now? it's a little one i wrote in response to someone else's prodding. (thanks, l.l. and RAP!) i think i need to set up another blog for this kind of thing. that, or change "ours" a bit. so far it's only seen entries from me and doesn't have the exact shape i imagined. hmm.

join me. inhale and exhale some more sweet lines this month.


because it's april

why write a poem
words to share
to dare spill what's within
like the clutter on the desk
seem unrelated worthless
yet have their place
tape measure, hole puncher, dollar bill
and the camera's back is turned
as if to say
none of you matter

- c. l. atkinson