New Poem

Sleeping with Ellie, Four Months

I wake at 11:00, 3:00, 6:30
to your little arm waving
in the dark.

Your fingers rake the air
testing the waters, to see if
I am still near.

A little snore floats past,
the leaves of a dream,
a current of cold.

I reach out and pluck
you into the boat
of me, curve around you,

fill your mouth
with my warm breast
and listen to you draw me in.

All around us the cold night
air currents and eddies,
against the timbers of our sleep

and I can imagine it's this easy
to keep you this close, this safe,
above the world's deep waters.

Ha Jin

Just finished Ha Jin's newest novel A Free Life. Amazing! He's definitely in my top 5 authors. The protagonist in this novel owns a Chinese restaurant in Georgia and wants to be a poet. It's heartbreaking and has so many truths about the difficulty of trying to be a writer. The novel ends with a collection of poems written by the protagonist. Here's one:

Another Country

You must go to a country without borders,
where you can build your home
out of garlands of words,
where broad leaves shade familiar faces
that no longer change in wind and rain.
There's no morning or evening,
no cries of joy or pain;
every canyon is drenched in the light of serenity.

You must go there quietly.
Leave behind what you still cherish.
Once you enter that domain,
a path of flowers will open before your feet.

This is the first week of my new tenure track job, and the first time I've ever been paid to write. I've written so little in the past two years--all my time has been teaching and caring for the babies. I've let my writing slide and fallen into the exact trap I tell my students not to fall into. But now that I'm getting paid to do it, I won't have any excuses.

I'm really struck by the line "leave behind what you still cherish." Any time writing is time away from the girls...yet it's work I love, too. And maybe there's a way to be with them, even while working. I've wanted to write about them, but like religion, or the other things I care about, it's such a large topic I feel lost in the shadow it casts. I guess all I can do is plunge in.

Dream Poem

Alas...no poem to post because I dreamt it instead of writing it. Does this ever happen to any of you?

I believe poems come to us in our most unconscious states, but that they only come once--if we miss it, it's gone. And of course the poems we dream are always brilliant in our memories aren't they? I can't remember a single line, but I remember that glow that comes right after a good poem is written….

Waiting for the Baby

So the doctor put me on bed rest this week. While it's agonizing to be inside, looking out at everyone on the beach, it is good motivation to write poems. Here's a very new one, not yet edited.


Turning Two

- For AnnaCaroline

Do you remember your tears
and panic last night? How you let me
hold you for a long time, your small
head tucked into my neck?

You are still my baby,
my little bug, my sweetest thing.
You will still sit on my lap, still call
to me in your dark dreams.

But I can also see the cocoon of you
spinning, wrapping your baby self
away, starting a new body as startling
as a luna moth, who will wake up one day

and realize how much more of the world
is now below, how reachable that branch
is. And we will love this you, too,
your wing against my cheek,

your flight rising in my throat.

Tidal Echoes Cover & David Woodie's Art

One of my favorite moments of publishing the journal is seeing the cover. This year the graphic design work is being done by two designers at Capital City Weekly, the local paper that is co-publishing with us now. Katie Spielberger is doing the layout and design and Anna Millard designed the cover. The cover features work by UAS professor David Woodie. His image is above. Amazing, isn't it?

I hadn't seen Woodie's work until the galley proofs of the journal came through and this one just knocked me flat. I go to gallery walk and look at art like any respectable Juneau citizen, but it rarely really bowls me over, and this one really did. I just love this. Somehow it captures exactly how I feel about Juneau.

Poetry Contest

The Fairbanks Arts Association called yesterday to let me know my poem "Proof" won 3rd prize in this year's contest. The FAA holds a yearly contest for all Alaskan poets, with a category for youth and one for adults. It's so great to see literary arts being promoted this way in Alaska. There always seems to be so much for the visual artists and not much for us writers.

So the awards ceremony is tonight in Fairbanks but of course I'm not going. When I talked to Seth, he said none of the winners will be in Fairbanks so he is arranging to call each of us and have us read our poems over the phone. This will be my first phone reading! I'm sitting by the phone now, waiting for him to call.

Here's the poem that won:


Proof


We have photo after photo
of splashes—

white wings of water
against blue silk,

swirls and eddies
where just a moment ago

a fin, a head, a tail
disappeared into the quiet dark

of the sea. And this is just how
it should be, when we show photos

down south at Christmas to curious
relatives, contemplating Alaska.

This is just how it should be
when we try to remember our own lives

and what brought us to this
moment. We can see the imprint

of hope on the surface of our faces,
while in our bellies, something dives

deep.


A few summers ago when AnnaCaroline was just a baby Corey's mom and dad came up to Juneau and we went on a whale-watching cruise. It's actually the first one I've been on since we moved here 13 years ago. Corey's dad is a photographer and he got these beautiful, amazing photos of humpbacks. Most of mine are of AnnaCaroline and splashes in the water. It's funny how often something that doesn't work, or turn out liked I had hoped, ends up in a poem. Poems are always good consolation prizes.

New Poem

Last Saturday I read at the Silverbow with a group of local writers. It was fun to see what other poets in Juneau are working on right now.

This is one of the poems I read:


Museum of Natural History, New York


Finally, the day when we will visit the Museum—
a long break between conference talks

and we all go—daddy, grandparents,
and you, rattling under the park and into

the belly of that amazing place.
I’ve been dreaming of the bones of sea turtles

for days. We walk
and walk and walk—you tucked against

my back, looking, looking
and soon we are overwhelmed.

How can we remember all these facts?
How can we hold the vision of so many

birds in our minds? Case after case
documenting a world we need to know better.

Finally, you whimper and save us both.
We slip away from the group

and into the blue whale room—
a life size replica slung from the ceiling

and the whole room, dark and blue
and cool. Below the whale is just a patch

of carpet and all the mothers and babies
are here on the floor. I take you out of your pack

put you down, and we both lie back
under the whale. It fills our whole

sight, going on forever, this view of a whale
that only nursing calves must see.

We follow its belly lines and they are the latitude
lines of the whole world. I reach out and touch

your head, as the quiet washes over us,
as we rest under the sea, and I remember

how I fit with you, and I remember who I am,
in this vast, unknowable world.



This one seemed to get the best response of the 6 poems I read. Maybe because it's the most narrative? I'm still kicking around the idea that poetry readings are hard because we can't follow lyric or meditative poetry orally. Do we need something narrative to hang on to when we're listening?