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[with 3 poems by Joanie McLean]
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Here Is What’s Left
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Summer wanes as usual
the Rudbeckia succumbs
to mildew and wilt
the figs fall
under the weight
of sucking junebugs
the pond is muddy
scummed over and still
even the birds are quiet
their calls diminished
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Looking out
at the brittle grass
in the crickety field
I see scraps and tatters
of old assumptions
of unearned grace
being dragged away
with the season’s remnants:
a semblance of security here
a shadow of normalcy there
pieces of convenience
disjointed shapes
of good times
all crumbling
as they go
leaving a light breeze
to stir the stillness
amidst the nodding
muhly grass plumes
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So then
here is what’s left
the grass
the breeze
the slipping light
the emptiness
whose touch is so gentle
the kindness of it all
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Joanie McLean
from Like Wind into Air, Redhawk Publications, Hickory, NC. © 2023
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Yesterday I took Dad and Mom to visit a senior living facility. After the tour we stayed for lunch, Dad and Mom seated at a table with two of the residents, Pat and Ken. Mary Ellen and I watched from a distance as Dad introduced himself and made conversation, charming, just charming. He and Mom seemed to be enjoying themselves. When we got home, I asked Dad for his impressions. “The place is nicely decorated, looks like it’s been painted. The lunch was good.” But when I asked if there were any negatives, he surprised me – “The people were all really old.”
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Perhaps every ninety-seven year old man lives in a universe of constricted perspective. Just breathing, minute by minute, may exhaust all of his empathic resources; every event of the moment becomes wholly self-referential. Nevertheless I will grant Dad this: when he says, “They were all worse off than I am,” maybe it is true that none have retained their social skills like he has.
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What about the seventy-one year old man? What is the insurmountable impediment inherent in becoming me-in-relationship with another? I watch myself constantly calculating how I will respond, or reflecting (regretting) how I have responded. I begin to see the other as the obstacle, the hurdle I must leap to become the actual me.
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Since my Beloved is for me and I for my Beloved, who will be able to separate and extinguish two fires so enkindled? It would amount to labor in vain, for the two fires have become one. . . Teresa of Avila
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And yet this is still me as observer and not as participant. Me watching and not being. Even if all others were to acquiesce and I in sidestepping could imagine my way forward now open and free and unhindered, I would still be tethered to me-in-relationship with myself. I am standing in my own way. I live by formulations and ruminations. I imagine it is the others who prescribe their expectations of me, but really I am the prescriber. I am the one who builds these enclosures.
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Mystics and sages of all traditions speak of the inner fire, the divine spark hidden in our very cells and in all that lives. This flame of love is the pure presence of God. . . Paula D’Arcy
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Do I spy a chink in the wall? The clamor of the world is not going to hush on my account, but perhaps I can press my eye up to the barrier and discern a little light. Not another book of philosophy or science, not a lambast of revelation or a self-created masterpiece – just a small warm flame. For even just a moment, let it burn. Let it burn me. Let it burn in me. May I glimpse me-in-relationship with all.
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Becoming fire means saying yes to life by the very way we live. . . Christine Valters Paintner
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Still With the Light
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First Sunday
after the first full moon
after the Spring Equinox
Easter morning for some
here on this particular land mass
so often a lovely day
at this latitude so often
a sort of gentleness
a willingness to smile
conveyed in the watery
green light that shimmers
and steps across
church lawns
and across my yard
where bluebirds jump
from the fence wire
into the broomsedge
and flutter back up
with crickets in their bills.
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There is something else
shifting like clouds
below a horizon
insinuating just beyond
these Easter lawns –
something that would
come near now
if I let it
would bend this light
differently
would spurn
this morning’s naive smile.
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So I stand
as still as I can
with the light
the breeze shifting
the shadows
the bluebirds
dropping and rising
dropping and rising
that’s all
just this holy light
just for now.
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Joanie McLean
from Like Wind into Air, Redhawk Publications, Hickory, NC. © 2023
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❦ ❦ ❦
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I am jealous of these poems. No, not jealousy with its sour tang of spite. I desire these poems. I long for them; I long to walk where they walk; I long to lie down in their grass. May I not also please hear the cuckoo and the woodcock, sense the coyote just down the path, know the secret of every color and flavor of light?
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Like Wind into Air by Joanie McLean sustains the beautiful image and promise of that title throughout its pages. Everything enters into everything, every season lives its truth, every life swirls and connects to every other: all-in-relationship-to-all. The poet gently dissolves every barrier between the reader and her world. In the grass in the slough in the stand of pines / life and death are fully accountable / part of a bargain –
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May I be as emptied and as filled as these poems? May I enter the poems’ world? And as I embrace their world may I not escape my own world but embrace it as well? This is the point of the poetry; this is the point of love.
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Joanie McLean’s Like Wind into Air at Redhawk Publications HERE
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In Late February
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there is always
a wind in the woods
a basso continuo hum,
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the fugue the chorus frogs
play toccata against,
the sound memory makes
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when it wakes and rises
up through the earth
towards sleeping roots.
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The field has forgotten
about summer and bees
and lightning.
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But the trees,
whose roots are deepest,
are remembering something
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and the frogs,
whose sleep is the lightest,
are dying to hear it.
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Of course February
would sing like this
whether I heard it or not.
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But again this year
I am here in the field,
at the edge of the woods.
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Joanie McLean
from Like Wind into Air, Redhawk Publications, Hickory, NC. © 2023
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V E R S E and I M A G E 
Love these poems of hope within the darkness of our personal winter. I always enjoy your essays. I empathize with your dad when we visit elder care facilities. At 83 all I can see is old people. For now I still want to continue to be a member of an ageless diversity.
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Hey, Les, maybe it’s really true, “You’re only as old as you feel.” We went for outpatient surgery today and Dad was mildly miffed that they put a yellow “FALL RISK” bracelet on his wrist – ignore the fact that he falls a couple of times a month. “Ignore” might be a reasonable coping strategy for some things, but . . . —B
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Bill, you have penetrated the source of beauty in Joanie’s elegant, “selfless” poetry.
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Thanks, Joan, yes — I am enraptured by Joanie’s poems. —B
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Wow! a blaze of light in every word! thank you to the poet and the presenter
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Glad to hear from you Jenny. These poems do indeed blaze light into dark places. —B
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Bill, another thoughtful and poignant essay. Perhaps we all are standing in our own way. Lovely quotes, too. As the legendary Dr. Bronner emblazons on his soap products, We Are All-One! I slowly read Joanie’s book and savored even the sadness in them along with the beauty. I did not know NC had cuckoos, for example, until I read her book.
Keep on keepin’ on. I love that your dad still sees the vitality in himself. That’s beautiful.
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I appreciate your comments, Debra. I spend about half the time reminding Dad to stay safe and the other half getting out of his way (though he did tell one of his nurses that I’m “bossy”). —B
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Bill – Your piece “Embrace” is a wonderful meditation on observing the self. Seeing my poems in such company is so gratifying! Thank you for your close and open-hearted reading.
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Thank you, Joanie, for opening my heart with your poetry. I need more days like to ones I’ve spent with your book. —B
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Thanks for sharing these poems and your thoughts, Bill. I think our Dads would enjoy each other. 🙂
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