[with 3 poems by Denton Loving]
Life is what happens to you while you’re busy making other plans.
John Lennon, “Beautiful Boy”
Tomorrow we are driving to Raleigh to see our 3-year old grandson Bert. In person! In the two months since our last in person we’ve visited at least once a week on FaceTime or extended-family Zoom sessions. Often he’s in the bath (easier to keep him in one place); he always wants to show us a toy or especially some of his many books; at least once he’s seen a toy in our background and asked to play with it.
Bert is excited to see us on the little screen but our daughter Margaret tells us that almost every day he asks, “Where’s Granny and Pappy?”
Life is busy happening to us while we’re not able to make hardly any plans at all. Where are we indeed!? All of us are no doubt in the same place: spending a lot of time thinking of things we can’t wait to start doing again when the pandemic has subsided (although it’s time for all of us who’ve learned the definition of pandemic to open the dictionary to endemic). Things to do after – you know you have a list. I’ll bet you’ve even been writing them down.
Herewith I’m starting a list of things I hope to be when the seasons of fear and loss and paranoia are past. If there has been any nano-benefit of living through a pandemic, it might be that I’ve started becoming some of these things already:
Open – to what other people need, to what they’re feeling, less fixated on self
Grateful – for the little things and what now seem like really big things, especially time spent with people I love
Aware of daily changes – in nature, in me and my family, present to the passage of time
Hopeful – life will never be the same, but then again what person actually has stepped into the same river twice? I’m glad I get to keep stepping in every day anew.
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Denton Loving’s book Crimes Against Birds has been sitting beside my desk for a good while – face down because Linda is creeped out by the cover. I am so glad I’ve kept returning to it. These poems have become my pandemic companions. It’s not only because of their intimate relationship with nature, outdoors, farm life. The poems are like rocking on the porch while the sun sets across the mountains and your companions are uncertainty, death, regret, loss, but also beauty and hope – you welcome them all, invite them to sit down and tell their stories while you get to know them. There is comfort and consolation in facing what has to be faced, and as you do the moon rises through the trees.
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What Was Told
(after Rumi)
What was said to the canna lily to make it
open was said here in my heart. What was
told the sycamore that made its wood hard
and bone white; what was whispered
to the storm’s wind to make it what it is;
what made the honeysuckle smell so sweet
in summer; whatever seed was planted
in the core of the mountain
people to make them love
so deeply, fiercely, beautifully;
whatever gives the catawba the pink inside
the white blooms – that is being said to me
now. I blush like the catawba’s flower.
Whatever gave life to letters and words
is happening here. The great sanctuary
within me has opened its doors; I fill
with thanksgiving as I savor the sweet
taste of honeysuckle on my lips, in love
with the voice that speaks also to me.
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My Father Leaves Harlan on 119
He remembered
when they started the first
eight miles of this new road
from Pineville to Harlan:
it was 1958.
They had closed
the mines. You couldn’t buy
a job anywhere.
Wilse and Stan and I
were on our way to Corbin
to put in applications – I
can’t remember where now.
Was so long ago.
They didn’t take Stan’s
or mine, and they never did call
Wilse back.
We were hungry
and stopped at Grandma’s
in Barbourville.
We came in the noon
of the day. I don’t think
she was too happy to see us
right in the middle of her work
but she fed us good.
Always did.
She’s been deal all these years
and here I am
Still driving
up this new road.
. . . . . . .
Your Very Flesh
I knew a woman who made fudge as thick
and smooth as summer and five times better
than any you ever ate. It’s an art
to make anything that melts on your tongue,
can be savored down deep in your soul. Makes
me want to know how to do it too. Do you
know how to do something that brings simple
joy in its beauty, will be remembered
after you die? Every July, my Nana
made fourteen-day pickles. For days, she soaked
cucumbers in salt water, removed to
cut in perfect slices, submerged again,
drained them and covered them, added alum,
added sweetness, drained and boiled the syrup,
covered again, dedicated fourteen days
to create something in the end that looked too
pretty to eat. But we did anyway. Now, she
is gone, and none of the rest of us will give
fourteen days to the drudgery of pickles.
I’m not only talking food. I know a man
who can quote lines from the classics to suit
any occasion. His gift is not just memory
but also timing and recitation. He’s a walking
anthology of lost verses, forgotten lines.
This same man cuts and sells timber, and I’ve
heard said there’s no one better to use every
inch of wood a tree can yield. There’s no waste
in his bones. Another art. And I bet
when this man stands in the woods with his saw
in hand, he pauses and gives a little
eulogy for the tree he’s ready
to bring down. May, a word from Plato
or john Donne, or this from Whitman:
your very flesh shall be a great poem.
all selections from Crimes Against Birds, by Denton Loving, Main Street Rag Publishing Company, © 2014
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The quotation from John Lennon’s song, “Beautiful Boy,” has also been attributed to cartoonist Allen Saunders in 1957: Life is what happens to us while we are making other plans.
When we meet with Margaret, Josh, and Bert in person we sit around in the backyard in Raleigh, masked if we’re less than 6 feet apart, but we’re allowed to get knee hugs from Bert. The chickens peck around us and garble and coo; Bert runs everywhere and shows us everything; maybe Josh has heated the wood-fired bread oven and makes pizza. If it’s too cold we have to get up and keep moving, maybe walk the Crabtree Creek Greenway. More than once it’s been too too cold and wet and we’ve just had to cancel the visit. But it will never be too cold After.
More about DENTON LOVING, his writing, himself: https://dentonlovingblog.wordpress.com/
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V E R S E ❦ I M A G E 