The Revenge of the Maple Tree

I finally had the maple tree in my front yard removed last summer. It was too big for the space, it kept the grass from growing, and the roots were threatening to crack my new driveway. I knew some day the limbs were going to take down the power lines to the house. Plus, every fall that maple dropped leaves all over the yard. So I paid an itinerant tree crew to remove it.

A month later I slipped on a wet leaf and broke my ankle in three places. Coincidence? I think not. I think the trees in the back yard heard the cries of distress as their colleague headed for the wood chipper and took their revenge when the opportunity presented.

The following poem speaks to cutting down a tree and also is a fine poem for a snowy winter day.

In winter in the woods alone
Against the trees I go.
I mark a maple for my own
And lay the maple low.

At four o’clock I shoulder axe
And in the afterglow
I link a line of shadowy tracks
Across the tinted snow.

I see for Nature no defeat
In one tree’s overthrow
Or for myself in my retreat
For yet another blow.


Robert Frost

My Mother Used to Say

My mother gave me a bit of wisdom one time when she was teaching me to iron. Ironing was a weekly chore in the days when everything you wore needed to be ironed, and I was probably eight or so when my mother decided I could learn to help.

I started with my Dad's white handkerchiefs, and was doing my best to make them perfect, when my mother suggested that I hurry things up a bit. I told her, "If it's worth doing at all, it's worth doing well."

"That's not true", she replied. "There are a lot of things in life worth doing whether you do them well or not. Some things are only worth a little bit of effort, and ironing handkerchiefs is one of them."

My mother also used to say, "All cats are grey in the dark." I never asked her how she knew.


This poem by Tess Gallagher always reminds me of my mother.

I Stop Writing the Poem

to fold the clothes. No matter who lives
or who dies, I’m still a woman.
I’ll always have plenty to do.
I bring the arms of his shirt
together. Nothing can stop
our tenderness. I’ll get back
to the poem. I’ll get back to being
a woman. But for now
there’s a shirt, a giant shirt
in my hands, and somewhere a small girl
standing next to her mother
watching to see how it’s done.

Happy Birthday Emily Dickinson

Today is Emily Dickinson's birthday, so I am sharing the following two poems. Emily Dickinson is one of my favorite poets, and Billy Collins is another.


Taking Off Emily Dickinson’s Clothes

by Billy Collins

First, her tippet made of tulle,
easily lifted off her shoulders and laid
on the back of a wooden chair.

And her bonnet,
the bow undone with a light forward pull.

Then the long white dress, a more
complicated matter with mother-of-pearl
buttons down the back,
so tiny and numerous that it takes forever
before my hands can part the fabric,
like swimmer’s dividing water,
and slip inside.

You will want to know
that she was standing
by an open window in an upstairs bedroom,
motionless, a little wide-eyed,
looking out at the orchard below,
the white dress puddled at her feet
on the wide-board, hardwood floor.

The complexity of women’s undergarments
in nineteenth-century America
is not to be waved off,
and I proceeded like a polar explorer
through clips, clasps, and moorings,
catches, straps, and whalebone stays,
sailing toward the iceberg of her nakedness.

Later, I wrote in a notebook
it was like riding a swan into the night,
but, of course, I cannot tell you everything—
the way she closed her eyes to the orchard,
how her hair tumbled free of its pins,
how there were sudden dashes
whenever we spoke.

What I can tell you is
it was terribly quiet in Amherst
that Sabbath afternoon,
nothing but a carriage passing the house,
a fly buzzing in a windowpane.

So I could plainly hear her inhale
when I undid the very top
hook-and-eye fastener of her corset

and I could hear her sigh when finally it was unloosed,
the way some readers sigh when they realize
that Hope has feathers,
that Reason is a plank,
that Life is a loaded gun
that looks right at you with a yellow eye.


by Emily Dickinson:

Wild nights! Wild nights!
Were I with thee,
Wild nights should be
Our luxury!

Futile the winds
To a heart in port,
Done with the compass,
Done with the chart.

Rowing in Eden!
Ah! the sea!
Might I but moor
To-night in thee!

Table Talk

My son and I were talking about favorite books recently and I remembered doing a blog entry on that once. I just went back and re-read it and I'm not sure I would change the list although I've read a lot of books since. If you want to read my list follow the link to my November 2005 Blog.

The question that came up with my son was why do we like some books and not others? I tried to explain why each of my choices was on the list, but sometimes we just like what we like.

My poem to share today is by Wallace Stevens.

Table Talk

Granted, we die for good.
Life, then, is largely a thing
Of happens to like, not should.

And that, too, granted, why
Do I happen to like red bush,
Gray grass and green-gray sky?

What else remains? But red,
Gray, green, why those of all?
That is not what I said:
Not those of all. But those.
One likes what one happens to like.
One likes the way red grows.

It cannot matter at all.
Happens to like is one
Of the ways things happen to fall.

Now it's your turn to share by sending me your list of favorite books.

A Poem for Tiger Woods

Tiger Woods is married to a super model, one of the most beautiful women in the world, yet he has been having sex with cocktail waitresses. This is difficult to understand, but maybe he married a really beautiful woman and then discovered she had nothing to say for herself, or maybe he married for status, but really just likes his women a little on the trashy side.

Here is a poem on the subject by Charles Bukowski:

the way it is now

I’ll tell you
I’ve lived with some gorgeous women
and I was so bewitched by those
beautiful creatures that
my eyebrows twitched.

but I’d rather drive to New York
backwards
than to live with any of them again.

the next classic stupidity
will be the history
of those fellows
who inherit my female
legacies.

in their case
as in mine
they will find
that madness
is caused by not
being often enough
alone.

Writer's Block

I liked the following poem, but I couldn't really figure it out at first. Then my sister was talking about having writer's block (she blogs, too) and I realized that sometimes I have a story to tell, but I have to search for a relevant poem, and sometimes I have a poem to share, but I have trouble relating it to a story. Some days I don't have either a story or a poem. So those days I don't blog.

Bad Day

by Kay Ryan


Not every day
is a good day
for the elfin tailor.
Some days
the stolen cloth
reveals what it
was made for:
a handsome weskit
or the jerkin
of an elfin sailor.
Other days
the tailor
sees a jacket
in his mind
and sets about
to find the fabric.
But some days
neither the idea
nor the material
presents itself;
and these are
the hard days
for the tailor elf.


My sister's blog.

The Day After Thanksgiving

For my family, Thanksgiving was all about the food. My mother was not a spectacular cook, but she could do turkey. She found a recipe once for cooking a turkey in a greased paper bag, and that was her method of choice. She used the Pepperidge Farm stuffing mix, adding onions and celery. She made mashed potatoes, sweet potatoes, green beans and peas. She put two packages of brown and serve rolls in the oven after the turkey came out, then usually forgot about them until they started to smoke. We always called them black and serve rolls, but we ate them anyway. Desert was pumpkin pie, apple pie and home make fruit cake. We started dinner in the early afternoon and it basically last all day. Desert was followed by several rounds of leftovers.

I have finally learned to practice a little restraint for Thanksgiving. We had a lovely meal yesterday, without overdoing it. My son helped me cook, which was wonderful, and my husband helped clean up, always appreciated. I talked to my daughter and my Dad, and both sounded happy, so my day of thanks was complete.

Here is a poem for those who were perhaps less restrained.

The Hymn of a Fat Woman

by Joyce Huff

All of the saints starved themselves.
Not a single fat one.
The words “deity” and “diet” must have come from the same
Latin root.

Those saints must have been thin as knucklebones
or shards of stained
glass or Christ carved
on his cross.

Hard
as pew seats. Brittle
as hair shirts. Women
made from bone, like the ribs that protrude from his wasted
wooden chest. Women consumed
by fervor.

They must have been able to walk three or four abreast
down that straight and oh-so-narrow path.
They must have slipped with ease through the eye
of the needle, leaving the weighty
camels stranded at the city gate.

Within that spare city’s walls,
I do not think I would find anyone like me.

I imagine I will find my kind outside
lolling in the garden
munching on the apples.