sun on the carpet

The world has been moving way too fast lately, and I feel as though I haven't been able to catch up. The fall was hard. The spring was harder. And now, we're headed into summer, which I hope will just be nothing but lovely.

In these moments, I tell myself to breath. And, I hold tight to the little things.

Boy Beeton and I stumbled upon this Little Free Library on the way to a birthday party. These gems are scattered throughout our neighborhood, but this one was particularly sweet.

Mr. Beeton was reading poems by Charles Bukowski. I'd never read Bukowski, but I definitely had a clearly formed image of him from my graduate school days. I opened the book to this poem, which took me by surprise. Completely at odds with the poet I thought I knew and so expressive of my own feelings about parenthood. 

Marina
majestic, magic
infinite
my little girl is
sun
on the carpet-
out the door
picking a flower, ha!
an old man,
battle-wrecked,
emerges from his
chair
and she looks at me
but only sees
love,
ha!, and I become
quick with the world
and love right back
just like I was meant
to do.

Keep sweeping,

Martha

Read My Name Is Lucy Barton by Elizabeth Strout. Watched Carol. Watching Catastrophe. 

in the meantime

I saw a post today on Facebook about poetry. A friend of mine from graduate school had assigned another friend of mine from graduate school the poet Amy Lowell. The idea behind the assignment was that my second friend would then make her own assignments to anyone who liked or commented on her post. Reading these exchanges first and foremost brought back excellent memories of a study abroad trip to London (TOX02, Wagamama, weekend trip to Dublin, creepiness) - both friends were on that trip. But, it also got me thinking about poetry - something I rarely read now but read a lot of while living in the first state.

I posted Deborah Digges's "For Sylvia Plath." I hadn't read much of Digges and didn't know her tragic story, but of course, I'm a sucker for anything Plath. And reading that poem prompted me to re-read the poem that Plath wrote for her son, Nick. It resonated with me as I laid out the rug in Baby Beeton's big boy room and as I sang "Away in the Manger" to him tonight.

Keep sweeping, Martha

PS - I know that I owe a post about our trip to the Sixth City. It's coming. I promise.

Nick and the Candlestick

I am a miner. The light burns blue.   
Waxy stalactites
Drip and thicken, tears

The earthen womb
Exudes from its dead boredom.  
Black bat airs

Wrap me, raggy shawls,  
Cold homicides.
They weld to me like plums.

Old cave of calcium  
Icicles, old echoer.
Even the newts are white,

Those holy Joes.
And the fish, the fish—
Christ! they are panes of ice,

A vice of knives,  
A piranha  
Religion, drinking

Its first communion out of my live toes.  
The candle
Gulps and recovers its small altitude,

Its yellows hearten.
O love, how did you get here?  
O embryo

Remembering, even in sleep,  
Your crossed position.  
The blood blooms clean

In you, ruby.  
The pain
You wake to is not yours.

Love, love,
I have hung our cave with roses,  
With soft rugs—

The last of Victoriana.  
Let the stars
Plummet to their dark address,

Let the mercuric  
Atoms that cripple drip  
Into the terrible well,

You are the one
Solid the spaces lean on, envious.  
You are the baby in the barn.

Finished watching Girls: Season 2. 

the world ends here

I've been catching up with old friends recently. In part because the winter break has allowed me time to email - a luxury I don't have during the semester when students and other faculty members bombard me with important (and, more often than not, not so important) electronic messages. And, partly because I've had a falling out with a really dear friend of mine, which has made me want to cling to truly loyal friends from my past even more. 

This particular friend who I've reconnected with was not just a friend; she was my roommate of four (!) years during undergraduate. It's weird to say, but I knew she would be a friend before I even knew her. In undergraduate, I worked in the financial aid office the summer before my freshmen year. It was part of my "package," an incentive to woo me attend this small, liberal arts school. One day, I was filing information on all the "special" scholars, the twelve or so incoming freshmen with outstanding high school records who were awarded pretty significant financial packages. I was one of those students, relieved that all my high school nerdy-ness had finally paid off (I missed a few hotel parties but so what?). One file, in particular, caught my eye; the name was unique, and when I picked it up, it almost felt like there was some sort of electric charge to it. When I got home that afternoon, I found out that that girl was assigned to be my college roommate. We roomed together all four years through the good and the bad, and we've remained friends since.

Why take this trip down memory lane? I emailed my old roommate to discuss the details of another college friend's destination wedding - a trip none of our college friends, at this point in time, are able to make. In those exchanges, I started discussing my new project - a scholarly examination of past and present food memoirs - and my old roommate, being an editor, shared her experiences with Amanda Hesser's work. She also sent me a poem that she and her family included in a cookbook that they made for friends and relatives one Christmas. It captures so much, so perfectly - "Perhaps the World Ends Here" by Joy Harjo.

Keep sweeping, Martha