13 Ways of Looking at 16

In advance of their daughter's sixteenth birthday, friends of ours asked family members and friends to write her letters including memories, advice, and inspiration.  Here's my contribution (and my favorite is #VII):

Dear Tess,

Wallace Stevens wrote his poem, “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird” and it occurs to me that it’s like a little Instagram account (whereas William Carlos Williams’ poem “Red Wheelbarrow” is like one Insta post, and “This is Just to Say,” also by Williams, is more like an apologetic message on a friend’s FB wall—oh hey, we could compare poems to social media moments! But I digress). So here’s a moment in time, your sixteenth birthday, for which we are creating snapshots, reflections, messages on your “wall,” so to speak. I am offering you “Thirteen Ways of Looking at Sixteen.”

So much love,

Fer

Thirteen Ways of Looking at Sixteen

I
Among the people at dinner that night,
The most memorable ideas, references, and insights
Issued from the sixteen-year-old.

II
I was of three minds,
Like a sixteen-year-old
In which resides child, teen, adult.

III
She, sixteen, danced in the sand, arms thrown wildly to wind and sky.
It was one movement in the choreography of her life.

IV
A man and a woman
had one.
A man and a woman and a sixteen-year-old
Are one.

V
They are all evidence of her,
Words, actions, body
And her slept-in bed, clothing, and acquisitions:
The sixteen-year-old’s being
As well as her props.

VI
Music from the turntable filled the room
With sounds like.
The limbs of the sixteen-year-old
Crossed and curled and extended along the couch.
Her mood
Represented in her postures:
Shifting landscape.

VII
O old folks of society,
Why do you imagine hoodlums?
Do you not see how the sixteen-year-old
Walks the world in feet
That become yours?

VIII
I know great minds
And inventions, accomplishments, triumphs, and talents realized over lifetimes;
But I feel, too,
That sixteen-year-olds influence
What I know and believe and love.

IX
When the sixteen-year-old drove out of sight,
It marked one edge
Of the polygon of independence.

X
At the sight of sixteen-year-olds
Delighting in their own company,
Even the most cynical observers
Gaze with longing and approval.

XI
I dreamed I was late to class
And dashing without progress.
Many times, fear grips my slumber,
When I am convinced
I’ve forgotten my chemistry homework
At sixteen.

XII
Time is flowing.
The sixteen-year-old is thriving.

XIII
She was young and she was old.
She was child and she was adult.
The sixteen-year-old was
Nevertheless always Tess.

Plenty of Poetry

I've been *enjoying* 3:00 AM insomnia for the past few months.  Sure, call it my body's way of preparing for a baby who is likely not as predictable as whatever internal alarm clock nudges me from slumber at an eerily consistent hour I can't even celebrate as close to early-morning workout time. 

I generally get up between 5:30 and 6:00, so it's sobering to think of how many hours I have after 3:00 each morning to accomplish something, and how little I actually do, as I snuggle my iPad and scroll through blogs and read articles and play a few rounds of Words with Friends (lather, rinse, repeat...).

Today, though, I used the United States Postal Service website to forward our mail to our new house and signed up for a poem a day via email on the Poetry Foundation's website.  I was so grateful to myself when Marianne Boruch's "Pencil" arrived in my inbox later this morning; I had to share it with an art teacher colleague. 

In the afternoon I spotted another teacher/friend scurrying away from the office who called out, "I just left you a poem!" 

Seriously?  Yes. 

There was a photocopy of Billy Collins' "The Effort" waiting for me on my keyboard. 

Today felt like a wonderful profusion of poetry, especially since I unearthed a poem I wrote when I was pregnant with Big Sis to publish here today:

Flutter

Something new is overtaking me
The wonder of you inside
My body a housing,
encasing hope, fantasy,
and infinite possibilities:
The unwitting agent
of change in the world, a new prophet
for the world's devout, I carry you
gently,
little moth. 

That Punishing Pooch

There was a period of time when I did yoga regularly...a time before I had children.  Now, I mostly run, because fleeing my home on foot only requires another adult left behind with the kids and no prior appointment. 

And, well, I love running. 

I love running so much that for decades I have pretty much ignored my upper body and, as it's become affectionately known, my core.  And then last year I was recruited into an inclusive club of colleagues meeting at 5:45 AM to work out to P90X videos projected on the wall of our dark and otherwise empty high school gym.  I have learned how to lift weights that weren't children or groceries.  I have learned how to make my abs hurt a lot.  I have learned that even though I run regularly, a good leg workout will mean I can hardly walk on those running legs the next day. 

I'm not trying out for a P90X promotional here; nor do I want to become part of Tony's Team, but I have to say, it's been nice to notice that my back doesn't hurt as much when I get out of bed, and I even sit and stand more comfortably since, allegedly, I have Strenthened My Core. 

This morning's o'dark-thirty workout incorporated some yoga, and I was reminded of a poem I wrote ten years ago, when I was dogged by one particular pose. 

Perhaps you can relate:

Down with Downward Facing Dog

I hate you,
Stretch that my dog achieves with such ease and grace and
sloping back
You make my calves burn and my arms ache.
I shift my weight and try, try, try
To push my heels down flat
while my biceps tremble and my eyes tear. 
I cannot turn my elbows outward
I cannot move my outer arms inward
I cannot move tailbone upward
I cannot release my head and make my back concave. 
I long to collapse on my haunches,
forehead on the wood floor.
I whimper when I hear the words
"Downward Facing Dog" 

Is That a Poem in Your Pocket, or...

As you know, I have a penchant for poetry, and I am prepping you for something portentous, pals:  tomorrow is Poem in Your Pocket Day, part of National Poetry Month (Hey!  How are you celebrating April??  You best be getting your O'Hara, Gioia, Oliver, and Collins on, to name a contemporary few). 

The premise of Poem in Your Pocket Day is to pack your pocket with lyrical lines and pass on a little literary love.  Don't be afraid of poetry, people!  If you need a primer, peek at Poetry 180 (Say, when is Alliteration Day?  I am prepared to participate). 

Little Sis is on board--she wrote her own haiku to give out to friends and teachers at school.

Big Sis is pondering her poetic participation.

As for me, I have 700 copies of this rhyming refrain to ration tomorrow:

Literary Lint



When you want to give a gift,
And make somebody’s day
Show you care, provide a lift,
You have to find a way.


But you don’t need a wallet
And you don’t need a purse
Here’s how I would call it:
Write a poem, give a verse.


Your pocket’s full of thoughts, you see
Just waiting to be shared
And words are always free
To distribute everywhere


Words don’t need to rhyme
To be deep or true or funny
You only need a little time
For lines worth more than money


It’s “Poem in Your Pocket” Day,
And here is mine for you
In hopes that other people may
Find inspiration too


Let's bomb the world with ballads, buddies!

On the Wane

Gibbous

A crescent moon, I cradle your shadow-body:  
soft, dark, deep slumbering.
You were tiny once, and I eclipsed you
In a tentative smothering and little sleep.
This phase, also, will pass--
Hair commingled, our thoughts closer than ever
Chests swelling and deflating in a round.
You'll be too restless soon
for staring skyward and whispering
As we watch the moon
Glowing, swelling,
And new.

Grandma Shirley

My Mother-in-Law

Shirley who is the anchor in a bustling port
And writes "Hiya" in the subject line
Who is coral and clowns
Who is pelicans and pastels
Whose home is never too small
Is scrambling some eggs
Who tells us we're wonderful
Who tells us not to worry
Whose blue eyes are glistening
Is letting us off the hook
Remembers Little League and sailboats
Is making lists
Is an album of pride and memories
Is grinning tell her a story
Has brought us all here
Who saved it for you especially
Is ornaments and white wine and mysteries
Who validates and cajoles and disagrees and chuckles
Is the forgiving ship in the family fleet
Asking how will you grow from here
How will you grow how?

The Write Gift

I received former student Lindsey's holiday card in the mail yesterday.  Along with being a gifted poet and person, Lindsey creates and sells handmade paper products.  Her card was hand-stamped (read her process here) and included a postage-stamped postcard to tear off and send someone (Lindsey, by the way, was the inspiration behind my post about postcards earlier this year).  How wonderful is a gift which comes with a gift you can turn and send someone?  Pretty niftily wonderful, I should say.

So I thought about gifts of writing and their value.  And about how low cost they are but also how difficult they can be to produce.  Which, nevertheless, should not deter you (despite the fact that I haven't been able to write here on this blog for the past week and a half, due in part to my obsession with Friday Night Lights, and to various and sundry life events alternately inspiring stress, relief, and mental zombiehood).  Creativity often requires a nudge, a nugget.  Thus I am offering you an idea for writing to and for someone you love. 

Personally, I feel a personal letter written on weighty, significant, or beautiful paper with a pen you love, and stamped and sent, is a simple, lovely, and all-too-rare gift. 

Poems win, though.  And one of my favorites to use as a template for writing a tribute to someone is Sandra Cisneros's "Abuelito Who."  I once posted my own version about Big Sis on her birthday, and here is an example I wrote about a former student:

Jared

Jared who is a silent redwood in a willow forest
And asks who is a true friend
Who is songs and docks
Who is camp and a green jacket
Whose smile is genuine
Is writing a story
Who tells us to listen
Who tells us be gentle
Whose eyes are pleading
Is making friends
Remembers summers and boats
Is hopeful
Is a cathedral of joyful voices
Is sad give him a hug
Has moved one time too many
Who hears chords in his head
Is adjectives and verses and tenors
Who soothes and serves and serves and soothes
Is the teaching tree in the listening forest
Asking who is a true friend
Who is a true friend who?

Try it.  I know I'd much rather have a poem (like my husband's wedding vows to me, which are framed and memorialized) than a new water heater.

Lanyard Love

Big Sis went to summer camp and came home full of camp cliches--three-legged races, corny and nonsensical (still trying to solve the mystery of Princess Pat and her "ricka bamboo") songs, and lanyards.  Oh, the lanyards!  We invested in some plastic lanyard cord and metal clips for endless braiding and looping and weaving.  We have lanyards as "flair" on backpacks, in the hair-tie basket, and under the couch.  Alas, Little Sis's fine-motor skill development to date prevented her from much success with sophisticated lanyard-weaving. 

Enter the Creative Weavers' Guild.  We encountered them at a weekend art walk, where they were weaving as well as giving away kits for making cool yarn lanyard-y thingies.  The handy little craft was ingeniously simple and somewhat addicting:  my daughters and their friend spent the rest of the day weaving away.  To fashion the kits, a guild member cut a hole in the center of a foam square, and knotted seven strings of yarn and fed them up through the middle with the knot underneath.  Two slits were cut in each side of the foam square, and one string of yarn pulled through each notch, leaving one empty.  To weave the lanyard, one simply counts to the third string to the right (or left--it's only important to remain consistent with direction) of the empty slit, pull that third string out, and pop it back into the empty notch, leaving a new slit vacant.  And over and over again (it's important to run one's fingers through the strings on occasion to keep them from tangling).  A neato braid appears below the square.  We finished the yarn weavings and then made a few out of plastic cord, too.  I imagine these braids could be made from more than seven strands, too, by just cutting more slits in the square.  It's a perfect activity for long car or plane rides...a birthday party or holiday craft...add beads or bells...

Keeping Them Busy, One Braid at a Time

And what do you know?  I even stumbled upon a lovely poem, "The Lanyard," by one of my favorite poets, Billy Collins.  Enjoy. 

Make You Feel My Love

"Our love story may not be traditional, and some people may never understand it, but to me it is a fairytale."

The wedding we attended this evening was magical. 

I struggle with being witness to such abundance of love and to a society which denies its legitimacy.  Nevertheless, hope, too, abounds that our children tearing it up on the dance floor tonight will know another way. 

For A&E

Between you

there is no thing;

there is only

you and you.

There are

you.

Tend the garden beneath

her branches.

Water the base of

her trunk.

Fertilize the soil

within which

the roots of

your strong trees

intertwine.

Like a Drawer in a Dresser

Last night I watched a 20/20 episode chronicling three teens' battles with heroin addiction. I was reminded that not all my former students have found their way. One of the benefits of having worked in the same schools for more than a decade now, though, is that I have been around to see some phoenixes rise from their ashes.

A woman I now call friend had an inauspicious start as my middle school student. I helped her out of some tough spots in high school, and wrote this poem about her several years ago. We met for dinner in September and over Indian food reflected on how our lives have changed since the day our paths crossed. My life has intersected with the lives of many incredible and resilient people, and she is one of them.

(Note: this poem is a pantoum, a form in which lines are repeated in a pattern)

For You, M.

I forgot to tell you yesterday how it felt
When you went wheeling, wailing by
Slid into the ambulance like a drawer in a dresser
I cried; my body felt weightless and light

When you went wheeling, wailing by
I didn’t look; I didn’t think it was anyone I knew; later
I cried; my body felt weightless and light
The first time I remember forgetting myself

I didn’t look; I didn’t think it was anyone I knew; later
I wondered how I could ignore your desperation
The first time I remember forgetting myself
Concentrating on you concentrating on pain

I wondered how I could ignore your desperation
And how you could ignore my outstretched arms
Concentrating on you concentrating on pain
I watch you forgetting yourself

And how you could ignore my outstretched arms
Is a question not worth asking, as
I watch you forgetting yourself
Trembling, shaking, cold and anxious

Is a question not worth asking, as
Other things are more important
Trembling, shaking, cold, and anxious
I want to wrap my happiness and comfort around you

Other things are more important
Slid into the ambulance like a drawer in a dresser
I want to wrap my happiness and comfort around you
I forgot to tell you yesterday how it felt

What's a Meta For?

Did I tell you I am treating myself to a writing retreat this weekend? I cannot wait. Actually, I can; I have some things I need to get done first, but come Friday morning I am flying away to be inspired. Just the anticipation of being inspired has me inspired.

Have I mentioned I am excited?

It's kind of an early fortieth birthday present to myself.

Poet Ellen Bass will be there leading workshops on writing poetry. I am particularly interested in the workshop on metaphors, as I have found apt analogies to be the seeds of most poems I've sprouted.

In honor of the fact that I have not written a poem in far too long, and in hopes that I will return from my weekend with words and ideas spilling from my well, I share an old poem.

I wrote it at a time when I recognized it was time to let go of a tired relationship.

Here's to metaphors!

Heels of Sand

Impotent waves fan over my feet
stretching and hovering across
unspoiled earth.
A pause—
pregnant with promise
awaiting the moment the sea grasps again
and firmament slips,
a dizzy inadvertent sliding
of all that’s solid.
I teeter on heels of sand,
stubbornly, and steadfast;
until I fall, and
you ebb
away

Still Waters

Here is a poem from 2002:

You are the only one who knows.
Over parched and arid landscape,
You, a divining rod,
Plunge through the deep, darkened earth of my eyes
To find moisture seeping—
buried, silent.

Stepping lightly over the consistent landscape
Of my life,
You’re the only one who knows.

And I am still,
Wishing the springs to run dry
Before a well is dug
And undercurrents rise
To muddy the ground beneath me.

Cycles

Today is the last day of school and tonight is graduation.

This senior class is special to me; when they were freshmen, I was a rookie Vice Principal. I've learned more than a few things from these students over the past four years, and many have generously invited me into their lives. I never sat alone in the stands at a game, and a group of regulars joined me and the principal for lunch almost every day.

I will miss them.

The Class of 2010 heads off toward a new horizon and another crop prepares to appear on mine next year.

And so it goes.

Last Days of School

for my students, June 2000

these are the bittersweet
minutes and hours and days.
broncos at a rodeo,
we press against the rails
waiting for the floodgates of summer
to fling open,
so we can pour out into
the rivulets of our futures.
you struggle to contain yourselves,
pollen on the wind in spring,
as I vainly shout after:
pleas, chastens, and advice,
echoing, dissipating syllables.
the knowing of you
the training in your ways
the anticipation of your moods:
all this to be flung aside,
trapped in file folders
and faded memory.
in September the mystery starts anew:
someone else will discover you.

In Honor of National Poetry Month

Writing in my middle school classroom.

This is how it happened:

Can you give us three objects, Miss Fer?
Who has the rhyming dictionary?
Do we have to write on the topic?
Can I sit on the bean bags?

Heads wag to music,
Pencils poise above blank, expectant spaces.
Giggles rise and recede like the tide.

Turn your screen so I can see it, please.
I’m thinking…
I’m looking for inspiration

And words slowly emerge from
The carpet at your feet dots on the ceiling gunfire ashes in the air loneliness divorce
mothers and fathers and stepfathers and stars and sports
Camels, donuts, soldiers,
and the pain of writing poetry

She’s giving me feedback
He’s reading my story
Shhhhhhhhh, I’m writing.

Notebooks of adolescent experience:
She eats lunch alone and you notice
He writes about himself, an enigma
A tribute, a diatribe, a memory
Angry words, happy words, pleading words,
Safe words.

Would anyone like to share?

Before There Were Blogs

Note: I am entering Mabel’s Labels BlogHer ‘10 Contest with the following post based on the hypothetical situation that...electrical storms are going to wipe out the Internet (perhaps forever). You have one day left to write about your passions: what do you want to say to the blogosphere in 300 words or less?

Once upon a time, before there were blogs, there were young writers composing stories, poems, and essays in a high school creative writing class. Quiet poets gained volume in verse; classroom characters practiced defining themselves in fiction.

Their teacher, moved by her students’ unique perspectives and vibrant voices, asked them to reflect on “How to Live.” And so they wrote: about stargazing, about deep breaths, about sweat and tears, about adventures, about love.

She pushed them to be brave with their powerful words, to open their ideas to others, to publish, to expose their works to scrutiny. “Take your words to the streets,” she assigned them, “and chronicle the reactions.” One student read her writing aloud in a park. Another writer left his inspirational lines in chalk on the sidewalk. A poet taped her verses to a bus stop bench.

On Monday morning the creative writing teacher received a phone call from a woman living in the community. She had gone out for a walk on Sunday morning. She explained to the teacher that her husband had recently died; she described her emptiness and an overwhelming sense that things were never going to be better. She confessed to being in a dark place, thinking dark thoughts.

Then she sat down for a spell at a bus stop bench and noticed a poem taped to the seat. The poem entreated her to look up. To feel grateful. To discover the beauty all around her. To hope.

Her spirits lifted, the woman wanted the poet to know that her lines had a profound impact on someone.

In the absence of blogs, this teacher argues, we still have lipstick on mirrors, letters in the mail, signs in windows, and poems in unlikely places. We only need the courage to share.

The Landscape of Loving: Mountains Beyond Mountains

Alas, I haven't written a poem in a very long while, though I have paused here from time to time to share a few (scroll down) from my archives.

How I miss writing poems. I miss, particularly, that moment of a poem's conception. The recognition of something--an event, circumstance, or emotion--arching into the abstract, and the poem is the bridge.

Teaching in a classroom of creative geniuses helped my process. Putting music on and pulling my journal out and writing with teenagers compelled the verses. Let us not diminish the luxury of taking an art class: Force me to paint, to draw, to write, to create! And I will!

Why is my current life so barren of poetry, so prosaic, I wonder? Four years ago I had my second child and shortly thereafter left the classroom to become Vice Principal. My life was instantly busier; office replaced classroom; observation gave way to analysis. These days are better chronicled, perhaps, in narrative than verse. Where I am poetry poor, I am now blog bountiful. And yet I hold out hope that my lyrical muse will return.

Without a classroom full of creative writing students generating rhymes and inspiring my own, I rely on the postal service to deliver fresh poetry to my mailbox. Thank goodness for The Sun Magazine and its monthly dose of prose and poems.

The right poem will stir me for days or weeks as I ponder all its allusions and implications. A poem can resonate on a single word, turn of phrase, or sentiment. I could wax poetic (if I were, in fact, writing poetry these days) on poems and how much I love them. I used to entertain my students with my effusive endorsements of the genre, likening poems to furry little animals one can snuggle in one's mind.

Imagine a world without poetry? I won't.

The gifts in the February issue of The Sun include Selected Poems by Brian Doyle. My favorite of the three published is included below, as it so moved me to seek permission from the poet himself (Note: receiving an email response from a Real Live Poet was quite a thrill!).

In his poem Brian Doyle recalls his young son's heart surgery. Our daughter was diagnosed with kidney reflux after suffering a kidney infection when she was three years old. It was two years of diagnostic and outpatient procedures before she had surgery that corrected what can be characterized as a minor structural problem.

Despite the hassle of numerous appointments and the heartbreak of watching one's child in any kind of pain, we left each visit to Children's Hospital grateful for our good fortune and perspective. Someone else's suffering is always worse, it is true, and as Mr. Doyle demonstrates in his poem, you will find your own self facing another mountain to climb just as you've crested the last seemingly steepest one. This is what it is to love, I think: to commit oneself to the "incoherent narrative shape" of life's worries, fears, and surprises "with all possible grace."

I am thankful for Brian Doyle's willingness to share his words. Isn't his last line lovely?

A Note on Vocabulary in the Cardiometabolic Field

Where I am wandering one afternoon thinking of my second son who not once
But twice had a surgeon’s fingers milling through the muscle of his wild heart.
Eleven years ago now. He doesn’t remember those hours, my boy, but I sure do.
His chicken chest gaping open like a mouth. Me eating a word like septectomy
For breakfast, bending it this way and that, trying to find any way to get inside.
Situs solitis & ventricular inversion & tricuspid hypophasia & anastamosis
Ranged across the horizon like the most incredible and unimaginable mountains.
Who ever thought there would be a time when we could remember those times?
But here we are on the other side of the mountains, and of all things to see what
Do we see? Mountains beyond mountains and yet more mountains beyond them.
We have such an itch for pattern and narrative, such a ravenous hunger for order,
But there is no pattern, there is no order, there isn’t really even a hint of coherent
Narrative shape, the fact of the matter is that at best we maunder forward with all
Possible grace in the moments when we are not thrashing and sobbing and crazy.
Believe me, I know about thrashing and sobbing and crazy, he’s a teenager now,
Arrogant as sin one moment and weeping from the bottom of his bones the next,
Making everyone weep with laughter one day and roar with fear and fury another.
Mountains beyond mountains and yet further mountains beyond those mountains.
I used to think if we could just get through this time everything will be peaceful,
At least we won’t be terrified and exhausted, but it turns out there’s lots and lots
Of ways to be terrified and exhausted, who knew? So hold my hand and let’s go
Up this next mountain. Who cares about other mountains? Isn’t this one lovely?

-- Brian Doyle

Mangrove

I was thinking today about this poem I wrote. It was inspired by a visit to Wasini Island when I lived in Kenya. On this small island with no roads and reachable only by small boat, I felt very far away.

Mangrove

If I ever see you again
I think it will be at the end of the world
Where tree limbs plunge inexplicably downward into
sand and saltwater
And you are rooted with the tide,
merging earth and water,
your arms reaching reaching
out to me and beyond
This lonely peninsula.

Crossing the Line

I was thinking tonight about the poem I wrote for Almost-Not-My-Husband more than ten years ago in a rather desperate attempt to win him back after suffering temporary delusions (you can read about my uncomfortable epiphany--#9--here).

I remember the stereo turned up high with a mix of significant-song CDs on shuffle play as I handwrote my verses on papers and glue-sticked them to a large-ish piece of cardboard. I drove that cardboard plea over to his apartment and propped it against the front door.

I'm still not sure why I constructed a billboard of my ode instead of slipping a folded piece of paper beneath his door, although I suspect that it was clear at the time that this was a Dramatic Moment deserving of bold print and edification. I'm grateful I was gutsy enough to unleash some dramatic flair, because here we are surviving our seventh year of marriage.

I recalled the poem tonight as we sailed our boat in the Wednesday night Beer Can Races. The notion of a starting line in sailboat racing has always fascinated me. Certainly there is a line. You just can't see it in the water, of course, though it's defined like any other line by points. At our Yacht Club, Beer Can Races start between a flag in the water and a black-and-white-striped stanchion on the docks. Determining where a boat is in relation to the line requires looking back and forth between the flag and stanchion. So much depends on your position relative to that line. And your line of sight. Meanwhile, you're constantly in motion.

The start of a sailing race is about getting to the starting line at the start of the race, and not before, and not too late. Boats that are too far ahead turn around in front of yours and everyone angles for a spot between those two points. I guess it would be as if everyone in a running race had to be jogging toward the line--from different directions--intending to cross it right as the gun was fired. It's exciting and chaotic, with potential for near misses and collisions.

Tonight, and when I wrote the poem, I recognized how many starting lines are largely symbolic. A sailboat officially enters the race when it crosses that invisible line, but it's been racing toward the start long before the horn is blown.

The lines in our lives are often blurrier. It's hard to say when, exactly, I stopped being "young," at least in the minds of others. Where my private and my public lives diverge. As always when I return to work after a break, I struggle with the line between Working Mom and Mom. If each of my roles--Mom, Wife, Daughter, Sister, Friend, Neighbor, Vice Principal--are lines of my life, they intersect, run parallel to one another, and sometimes feel perpendicular. I'm pretty sure I'm straddling a line between "getting started" and "all done," particularly when I'm considering how much is enough. And I find it's the seamlessness, when one line merges imperceptibly into the next, that breeds contentment.

Drawing lines in the sand, it turns out, accomplishes only philosophical stands: the temporary definition of a status quo, subject to shifting winds and whims.

And on winds and whims, in my poem I acknowledge that I let myself be blown off course for a time before I recognized where I truly belonged. When the line between beginning and ending came sharply into focus.

Eleven Minutes

The starting line is a blur
of lapping waves and churning water
much like us I’m not sure when exactly
that moment was when we started
but we were ahead
before we knew it.

Winds blew;
You adjusted sails when
shifts caught us unaware.

No expert sailor
nor navigator,
I steered us to the end*.

*My husband would like me to mention that the ending of this poem left him unsettled. Given the fact that I, in fact, altered course before the finish line, we're now revising the last line of this poem to read, "I steered us around the mark."

Least Common Denominator

Sometimes I read my old writing and cringe. Sometimes I read my old writing and it feels a little foreign, like, what an interesting word choice, Fer.

Here's an untitled poem I wrote in November 2002:

There’s something worth cultivating in this
post-season soil we sift through
for a sign,
a principle,
a basis for our labor.

Fingers scratching stone and seashells,
pottery shards, loamy chunks of clay,
we’re unearthing secrets,
sorting revelations.

What we’ve come for—
our least common denominator—
must be this seed,
nestled among
the neatly designated rows of what should be
and the furrows
of chance

Afternoon Whiskers

Today is my grandfather's birthday, always the day after my littlest sister's birthday. Easy to remember. So is my grandpa.

Today my mother is with my grandmother, who is in the hospital having surgery. While I am not happy Grandma is enduring painful medical procedures, I am glad my mother is there with her today, May 18th.

My grandfather was an amazing man. A unique man, a Renaissance Man. He was an educator, a boater and a sailmaker, a photographer, a literature lover, a carpenter, a tinkerer, a scientist, a philosopher, a kind and funny person, and a most unbelievable grandfather. It's one thing to be the kind of grandpa whose granddaughter--as a child--thinks he is magical, wise, and loving. But for me to recognize as an adult--nearly 23 years after his death--how lucky I was to have known him, and for his lessons to continue to inspire, is another thing. I wish my husband, a sailor, had the chance to meet him. I am fortunate my own daughters have magical, wise, and kind grandfathers.

My grandfather taught me to tell time on my first watch, a light blue Snoopy watch.

He collected model trains and devoted a room in the basement to his train set and the town it inhabited. I remember that room festooned with witty signs I better understood later on, like "I never make mistakes. I thought I did once, but I was wrong."

He taught me that I had eleven fingers by counting down on one hand: "Ten, nine, eight, seven, six...plus (other hand) five fingers...equals eleven!"

He came to visit us in Coronado when I was in middle school and set to work fixing our bicycles. I remember hanging out with him in the yard while he worked on one in particular, and explained to me that the circumference of the bike's wheel changed, in effect, with each gear change relative to a rotation of the pedal. I didn't understand what he meant until physics class in 11th grade. And even then, wow.

He taught me about the profundity of brevity. He cited the shortest bible verse: "Jesus wept." He pointed out that the bible writers didn't explain that "Jesus sat on a rock and cried," but communicated so much more in only two words. He connected that verse to one of his favorite works by famously succinct author Ernest Hemingway, The Old Man and the Sea.

Grandpa made me a red-velvet lined, almond-wood jewelry box as a gift one year. It's one of my most treasured possessions. On my right hand I wear a jade ring with two tiny diamonds that he gave my grandma.

Grandpa died as I was entering my 10th grade year of high school. One of the few but greatest regrets of my life is not being present for his memorial service. At the time, I was selfishly concerned with missing my debut into sophomore year.

In my freshman English class in college, British Lit, we were charged with writing a poem in pentameter. I wrote this poem about my grandfather:

Afternoon Whiskers
for my mother, my aunts, and my grandmother

Pausing by the edge of the pier, and a
shrilling gull aches my ear; the bow line thrown
slaps my skin and leaves a salty white blur.
And I, once driven by reminders in
touch, scent, and sound, have him here with me by
sticky hair, wet wood, the squeak of rubber.
I am back: in his lap, and he teaches
verses and symphonies and boats
while his afternoon whiskers sand my cheek.
The day they went (Now I picture black things…
black suits and cars and dresses, umbrellas)
and I didn’t, they read that sea poem,
without me. So now the San Juans lull me
and my guilt and my family and my
life he does not know but once lived so well.