Having just enjoyed another annual trip to visit my friend in Rockport, Mass., I looked back to reread a past post about my visits there. It’s still resonating, so I thought I’d share it again:
https://nixthecomfortzone.com/2015/06/28/tick-tock-tick-tock/
A couple of weeks ago, Linda Mitchell hosted the Roundup (here) and generously offered up some “poetry clunkers” for others to use. I was intrigued by the line “What if this poem didn’t care?”
What if this poem didn’t care?
What if this poem didn’t care?
If it simply gathered up
its syllables and vowels,
packed up its consonants
and hit the road
not even looking back once
to see me, bereft,
fading in the distance
a pen, broken, in my hand
Molly Hogan ©2019
Jone McCulloch is hosting this week’s Roundup at her blog, Deowriter. She’s sharing a fabulous poetry swap she received from Tabatha Yeatts along with some of her swap-inspired poems.
During the last month or two, I’ve been playing around with some poetry forms in my notebook. Sometimes I find that I enjoy staying within the framework of a structure. I liked the idea of odes, and I thought it might be fun to write one about some relatively mundane subject. Oatmeal came to mind.
It occurred to me as I began to write this post to share my ode, that someone else might have written about oatmeal. Why not do a quick search? I did and, much to my delight, discovered “Oatmeal” by Galway Kinnell:
I eat oatmeal for breakfast.
I make it on the hot plate and put skimmed milk on it.
I eat it alone.
I am aware it is not good to eat oatmeal alone.
Its consistency is such that is better for your mental health
if somebody eats it with you.
That is why I often think up an imaginary companion to have
breakfast with.
Possibly it is even worse to eat oatmeal with an imaginary
companion.
Nevertheless, yesterday morning, I ate my oatmeal porridge,
as he called it with John Keats.
Keats said I was absolutely right to invite him:
due to its glutinous texture, gluey lumpishness, hint of slime,
and unusual willingness to disintegrate, oatmeal should
not be eaten alone.
(click here to read the entire poem–it’s worth it! I promise!)
If you’d like, you can listen to Galway Kinnell read his poem aloud:
The downside of discovering Kinnell’s poem is that I am now less inclined to share my own. It feels a lot more pedestrian, and it’s definitely geared toward a younger crowd. But, hey, it’s my little love song to oatmeal, so I’m going to post it anyway and just keep reminding myself, “Comparison is the thief of joy.” (T. Roosevelt)
Oatmeal
Oatmeal, oh oatmeal
most trustworthy food
warming my belly
sweetening my mood
You nimbly transform
with each addition
breakfast chameleon
packed with nutrition
With you by my side
each day starts off right
Oh, fairest of grains
my breakfast delight
©Molly Hogan, 2019
Stop on by Tricia Stohr-Hunt’s blog, The Miss Rumphius Effect, to check out this week’s Poetry Friday Roundup. She’s sharing a wonderful triolet, inspired by a challenge, some self-reflection and a bit of family and national history.
The end of school came in with a typical whirlwind of activity and a few delightful-but-tiring extras thrown in–an accumulation of a couple of weeks of nonstop activity and lots of people. I packed up my classroom on Friday and limped out of the school year. On Sunday, I took off for NYC and a wonderful, intense week of learning at Teacher’s College Summer Reading Institute.
By the end of the week, I was a limp dishrag, ready to hoist the white flag (and to mix a few metaphors along the way), and in search of solitary confinement. But it was time to head to Ohio for a visit with family and friends.
I hate flying, and typically dread the entire experience, but as I boarded the plane, it occurred to me that this flight was going to be my last chance for solitude and relative inactivity for the next 4 or 5 days.
“It might even be nice!” I thought, looking forward to peace, quiet and some solid reading time.
Then my seat mate arrived.
She was a lovely, young woman, excited to be heading back from a trip to Germany to visit her parents and looking forward to her reunion with her boyfriend, and their new apartment, and the upcoming trip with his family, which she’d promised them a year ago that she would go on and it meant she had to leave Germany early, but…
Ding!
She paused to glance down at an incoming text.
“Oh, my family just went to the vineyards without me! Why would they do that after I left!?”
She then burbled on at greater length about her family, her boyfriend, her recent trip, her upcoming trip. She was lovely and sweet, but oy!
She finally paused and asked me, “What do you do?”
“I’m a teacher.”
“Oh, what grade?” she asked.
“Fourth,” I replied.
She turned her body fully toward me, her face alight.
“Oh! My fourth grade teacher saved my life!” she exclaimed. Then she went on and on… about how she thought she’d wanted to be a teacher, and about an experience she’d had working in a classroom when she was in school in England (with a long detour to explain why she’d attended middle school and high school in England) and how wonderful it was but it just wasn’t for her, but the kids made her this wonderful book and she still has it and it was wonderful ….
Then she repeated, “I just loved my fourth grade teacher! She saved my life! Really, she did! She was the first person to bring my attention difficulties to my parents’ attention.” (Which, to be honest, made me wonder how much attention her parents had been paying. I also heroically restrained myself from suggesting that her prior teachers had probably noticed something as well.)
She continued, “We loved her. And she loved us.” She paused dramatically, then said, “She loved us so much that she taught us the next year, too!”
uh huh
Eventually, after I had a pretty good picture of the past year or so of her life, with some childhood details sketched in as well, she trailed off and we began taxiing down the runway.
Taking-off is the hardest part of any flight for me. My go-to strategy is to bury myself in a puzzle book of sorts, typically word games. So, I buried myself in my crossword, trying to pretend I wasn’t on a plane (my go-to strategy). I entered my zone of intense concentration.
Midway through our ascent, a voice penetrated my carefully constructed zone. I ripped my focus from my puzzle book and looked around.
“Excuse me. Excuse me…”
I turned toward my seat mate. Yes, she was talking to me.
“I’m sorry to bother you, but I thought since you’re a teacher, you’d have seen a lot of this and know.” She pushed her finger into her right eyelid and bent closer to me.
“Do you think I have pink eye?” she asked.
I stared at her, slightly bemused. “What?”
“Do you think I have pink eye?” she repeated, jabbing her finger toward her eye again.
Finally, I replied, noncommittally, “Well, your eye lid is slightly red.”
“I know!” she enthused. “It’s been bothering me all day and it feels funny. So I was wondering if you think it might be pink eye.” She looked at me expectantly, leaning closer.
I stared back at her.
“No,” I finally said slowly and decisively, still struggling to make sense of the moment, “it is not pink eye.”
“Oh, phew!” she said, exhaling, and leaning back into her seat, looking mightily relieved.
Phew?! Phew?! Like I’m the authority and this potential problem is now solved?
I turned back to my puzzle book and went back to pretending I wasn’t on a plane, hoping that she really didn’t have pink eye.
It was going to be a long flight.
I’m in New York right now, participating in Teachers College Summer Institute for Reading. What a week of learning this has been! I’m always inspired to write by the sights and sounds of the city around me, but it’s tough to find time and mental energy to devote to it. Here are a few in-the-works poems inspired by the sights and sounds of NYC.
Broadway buzzes by
he curls around his black bag
a sleeping question
©Molly Hogan, 2019
A Subway Moment
swept into the subway
by torrents of rain
and arcs of lightning
I stumble onto the train and stand
pressed against passengers
a humid mass
of bedraggled humanity
through the window
I see a man
sitting on the platform
his hands dance gracefully in the air
drumming an inaudible tune
against an invisible drum
his bag of belongings behind him
he sits in his island
taps and beats until
his hands agitate
as if tripped up, bumping up
against microscopic motes
He grimaces
cocks his head
his hands still
Until…in a moment
his face smooths and
he resumes
his drumming
above us thunder booms
rain pummels the city
my train pulls away
Molly Hogan ©2019 (draft)
(Note—I edited this after first posting)
Journey
A man slept on the street
his naked feet
pale and surprisingly pink
peeked from beneath
a dingy blanket
Who washed these feet
when they were small?
Did anyone count and kiss
each precious toe?
Chase the little piggies
all the way home?
wee wee wee
What a journey
Molly Hogan ©2019 (draft)
This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by children’s author, poet and wonderful photographer, Buffy Silverman at her blog (here). She’s sharing a peek into Helen Frost and Rick Lieder’s book “Hello I’m Here” and a wonderful original advice poem. What a delight!
I’m at the TC Summer Reading Institute in NYC right now. It’s pretty wonderful. I could write about the amazing sense of community, the energy and the powerful learning. I could write about how excited I am to be here, and about new practices I’m dying to implement in my classroom. I could write about the long, rich conversations with my colleagues. But I’m still processing all of that, so instead, I’m going to write about a bathroom. Really. I’m actually totally fascinated by the bathroom down the hall from my morning session.
Don’t dismiss this too quickly. Bathrooms are pretty important here. There’s a limited time to move between sessions, so knowing where the not-too-busy bathrooms are is pretty critical. The bathroom I’m focused on isn’t very busy, and I get a total kick out of it.
The first time I walked into this bathroom, I thought, Oh, this is pretty small. It must be a one-person bathroom. (Again, this is important knowledge!) But then I walked further and around the corner a whole row of stalls appeared.
Oh! I stopped in my tracks. It’s like a Harry Potter bathroom! I thought (or maybe I said aloud.) It was love at first sight. Now, I use that bathroom exclusively in the morning, and every time I use it, I turn the corner and I’m thrilled all over again. (Clearly, it doesn’t take much to entertain me.)
I wasn’t sure if I was going to post today, but then I thought, Hey, I can write about the bathroom! Part of me asked, Are you sure about that? But the other fuzzy over-stimulated and a wee bit tired part said, Yeah! It’ll be fun! Then I thought, Oh. I should take a picture. Wait … Can I take pictures? What if someone walks in while I’m taking them? That would seem pretty odd, if not downright sketchy.
I thought for a minute. Hey, it’s all in the service of a slice! Why not? So, I finally whipped out my cell phone. I took my photos (which don’t give the full effect because I was not willing to hold the door open, stand in the hall and take the first picture) and opened the door to leave. A woman tried to enter at the same time.
“Oh!” she said, seeing the cramped quarters and stepping back. ” I’m sorry. This must be a one person bathroom.”
“No!” I said. “Look! It’s fabulous! It’s like a Harry Potter bathroom!” I gestured around the corner. Obediently she looked.
“Oh,” she said. Then she feel silent.
“Isn’t it great!?” I enthused.
She nodded silently. Somewhat disappointed by her apathetic response, I moved around her to leave the bathroom.
In retrospect, she may have been taken aback by my enthusiasm, but perhaps she was simply awed by the wonder of the bathroom. I prefer to think it was the latter.
Either way, I’ve discovered my own little piece of magic at TC.
Wherever I go, I watch birds. I spend hours watching birds at home, at the beach, and at the river. I confess, I even watch them while I should be focusing on the road. In fact, I’m amazed that, to date, I’ve emerged unscathed from majorly bird-distracted driving! At any rate, I’m especially captivated by the daily drama at our feeders, and it frequently distracts me from my work. I often wonder about the birds’ ability to intuit the arrival of a new type of suet or fresh oranges or sunflower seeds. How do they spread the word? I recently reworked an old poem about this, and thought I’d share the new and hopefully improved version here.
The Bird Word
Do they read a daily flyer
to alert them one and all?
Do they chatter at the back-fence
and report each new windfall?
Do they banter at the birdbath
’bout the tasty treat du jour?
Do they gossip while they’re gorging
at the feeder by the door?
Do the bluejays trade in hearsay,
while the chickadees chitchat?
Is there message to decipher
in woodpecker’s rat-a-tat?
Do the sparrows spread the news?
Each tweet a coded whistle?
Could one chirp mean sunflower seeds
and two long tweets mean thistle?
I suspect they gather nightly
to exchange the feeder news
and to seed their conversations
with their coded birdly clues.
I could sit still and decipher
how the word spreads with such speed
but instead I must go shopping…
I need two more bags of seed!
© Molly Hogan
This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Laura Shovan at her blog. She’s sharing some wonderful student poetry from her recent stint as poet-in-residence.
And because I can’t resist sharing photos….here are a few of some feeder action 🙂
Addendum: Honestly, I just looked outside this morning and saw: a rose breasted grosbeak, a ruby throated hummingbird, several blue jays, a red winged blackbird, a red-bellied woodpecker, a white breasted nuthatch, a mourning dove and a catbird. In one glance! How lucky am I?
As evening approached, something nudged me to look out the window. Sure enough, there in the misty field, a deer foraged. Grabbing my camera, I tiptoed outside, easing the door open and then closed.
I rounded the corner stealthily, but as I had sensed its presence, so it sensed mine. It raised its head. Our eyes locked. We both stood still. My hands froze around my camera, stopping its ascent.
Time seemed to stop and swell, to ripen, as we stared at each other. I felt the weight of the camera in my hands, the hard ridged plastic of the telephoto lens against my motionless fingers. The catbirds sang back and forth in the nearby trees, and a woodpecker drummed. From far away, I heard the faint whine of a lawnmower. Still, we held each other’s eyes.
A minute passed.
Then another.
Finally, one of the deer’s ears twitched. It took a big step backward, easing out of the thicket of shrubs. I held my breath, remaining still, my camera clenched by my side. Motionless.
The deer suddenly exhaled a loud warning “Huff!”, turned and bounded across the field, its white flag of a tail flying high. I quickly raised my camera and snapped a few pictures, expecting it to disappear into the trees. Instead, to my surprise, it stopped at the edge of the field, turned and looked back at me. I froze, camera raised to my eye, as it stared at me.
After a long minute, I retreated around the corner of the house. Perhaps if I left, I thought, the deer might return to peacefully eat the shrubs. I stood for a moment or two on the front deck, then carefully peeked around the corner. The deer was still standing there, silently staring in my direction.
Once again, our eyes met.
As I backed away slowly, I wondered just who was observing whom.
Driving to work recently, I noticed a turtle crossing the pavement on the other side of the road. There was no place to pull over safely, so I kept going. As I drove on and up the curving hill, I glanced back over my shoulder.
Hurry up, little guy!
The distance between us was growing.
Maybe there’s somewhere up ahead I can stop…but it’s probably a snapping turtle… Ugh!
Still, I should really pull over, walk back and move it…
I looked at the edge of the road. There still wasn’t a great spot to pull over. I looked down at my sandal clad feet. Clearly nudging the turtle with my foot (which I have done in the past) wasn’t an option.
If I try to pick it up, its head is going to whip around, its jaw will open and SNAP! that’ll be the end of my finger! Darn it. I should have clicked on that video link I saw on Facebook the other day. Then I’d know how to move it safely.
While my internal monologue droned on, I continued driving, each moment moving farther and farther away, from both the turtle and from the likelihood of moving it. Just stop! I told myself, beginning to feel like someone who abandoned a puppy, or didn’t call 911. Guilt spread on me like a greasy stain, but I kept going, rationalizing why I wasn’t stopping — It was almost to the edge, wasn’t it? It wasn’t safe for me to pull over. I have so much to do at work! My fingers! The next driver will surely stop.
The next driver.
When I drove by that spot the next day on the way to work, I slowed way down. My eyes scanned the pavement, searching for a tell-tale smudge. Nothing. I’d like to say I felt relieved, and I did, but mostly I still felt guilty. I should have stopped.
Even now, weeks later, I still feel uncomfortable that I didn’t stop, though I have that defensive queue of excuses lined up tidily in my head. But most of those excuses are pretty thin. Really, I chose not to act because it wasn’t convenient and because I was scared–of a small snapping turtle. Ultimately, I hoped that someone else would do what I should have done. But, as one of my colleagues is fond of saying, “You don’t want to be that guy.” And I don’t. I want to be the driver who stops, not the one who keeps going.
So, after writing this, I decided to go back to Facebook and watch the video to eliminate at least one of my excuses. Honestly, after doing so, I’m not sure I feel much better about moving a snapping turtle, but at least I’ll have a starting point.
My husband and I celebrated our 30th wedding anniversary this past Monday. I wrote him this, my first love poem, in honor of the occasion.
Love Poem
If I wrote a list of my favorite things
owls would perch there
as would the seed heads of dandelions
with their wind-wild confetti parties
I’d jot down twisting wisps of dawn-lit fog
dew-bedecked spider webs and
the first chorus of the spring peepers
along with bloom-laden stalks of hollyhocks
the scents of balsam and cinnamon
and the echoing cry of a loon
Then, above them all,
there’s that spot on your neck
beneath your left ear
and your scent that rises as I lean in
to press my lips there
the constellation of freckles on your shoulders
and the solid warmth of you beside me
at the close of every day
Molly Hogan ©2019
This week’s Poetry Friday Roundup is hosted by Mary Lee Hahn at her blog, A Year of Reading . She’s sharing a wonderful original poem entitled “I Am Not”, inspired by a Naomi Shihab Nye prompt. This week many others are also sharing poems with a Naomi Shihab Nye theme. Stop by to check them out!
Nix the comfort zone 