Well . . .

Best get this off my mind now before the new year comes.

Imaging
Carol Schiess

Hands tied to the rails of a gurney,
her fingernails dig at the air,
head turns side to side in a ritual
of movement. An attendant pushes her along,
his steps quick, knowing the way
to the X-ray lab without looking

She seems not to look, not to see
the paintings on these basement walls,
bright watercolors--reds, greens, yellows
cascade across the paper; children, bunnies
collide in unhindered play; happy nature
holding back some threat, some hidden terror.

She moans, calls out for help, cries
for love or proper care or someone.
"There, there," her escort answers.
He does not know her name. "There, there,
we're almost there," his litany
sterile as the place. "There, there," again,
as if the X-ray lab would be her haven.

Three Brief Stories

I
We have the post-Christmas cold. I say we because Ann has it, and John, and Charlie. This morning I went to church for a while and learned that folks there have it, too. But I have come home early to rest and maybe even sleep away this cold virus. That is my hope.

Just now I am listening to Cesar Franck, his violin sonata, a simple piece of music in that it is only the violin and piano, and very soothing to me.

II
Speaking of music. when we were all here together Christmas morning, I said to Aaron, "This note I'm about to sing, I believe it's a D." I sang it. He said, "Hmmm. No. You're flat. It's a D-flat," went to the piano and played a D-flat.

So, big deal. I was close.

III
And speaking of the violin.

Christmas night Charlie asked if he could play the violin, the one that has been in my basement for more than a decade. He loves to play it. I said no last Sunday because there were too many kids here, and the instrument could suffer, I thought.

Monday I finally did what I've thought to do for many months: took it in for repairs--four new strings and a new bow--which will cost much more than I paid for the violin initially. But I want it to be in good repair so that Charlie gets a true idea of the violin. Yes, I know, this one, although it is about 1/2 size, is too big for him, but he'll get a sense of it. It should be finished some time in early January.

So, on Christmas night I explained to Charlie that the violin was not here. "Why?" he asked, verging on tears.

"I took it to the violin shop to get fixed."

"Why?"

"The bow doesn't have much hair on it and it doesn't tighten, and strings are missing from the violin. When I get it back it will be all fixed. For you."

Silence. Thoughtful silence. Unconvinced silence.

"So it isn't here right now, Charlie."

"Well," face crumbling into crying, "could I play with your tape measure then?"

"Yes. You could." And glad I was that it was still here.

Merry Christmas, and I mean it

Yesterday morning I spoke to myself, out loud, as I got out of bed. "Hooray!" I said, "it's Christmas Eve day and I don't have to go anywhere."

I got dressed, got my trash out to the street, went in and turned on the light over my kitchen table. Pop! Blue flash.

Which meant I had to go out. Thank goodness Home Depot is close. Drove up there.

"Well," said Chris, "we have it, but not in clear."

It has to be clear because of the light fixture it goes in. I was tempted to get the opaque bulb and be done with it, but I just couldn't. Chris looked up Pay 'N Pack's number. I called them from Home Depot (aren't we so glad for cell phones?).

"Ask them if they have a G40 bulb," said Chris.

I did. "Do you have a G40 in 100 watt, clear?" They had it. I thanked Chris for his help and told him I'd be going over there to Grover's. He said he was glad of that and to tell them Home Depot sent me.

"I'd never send you to Lowe's," he said. "I don't like that place, even before I started working here." I wasn't about to go to Lowe's. I never think of it. Besides, it's farther away than Pay 'N Pack. Off I went.

All of this was dandy. Which is code for it wasn't dandy.

I had to go all the way over to Franklin and Curtis to get my light bulb. Franklin and Curtis is quite near the mall, which is where I ended up--I should have known it--before stopping at Winco on the way home. I had to get pretzel sticks and sour cream.

So much for . . . you know.

I needed to get home, though, so I could make these no-bake treats, the recipe for which I cut from the Kashi puffed cereal box and which, after I made them, I then named Wotear. That's an acronym for Waste Of Time Energy And Resources. All mine.

Kashi/pretzel haystacks is what they call them. Coconut, chopped almonds, pretzel sticks broken into 3/4 inch pieces, lots of Kashi puffed cereal (big mistake), peanuts. Twelve ounces chocolate chips melted with all the peanut butter I had left--1/2 cup--stirred into the dry stuff. Then you drop them (no easy task) onto waxed paper and set them in the fridge to chill. Wotears. They didn't taste very good before chilling. Maybe they would after. But I decided not to hold my breath.

I took some over to Darringtons. Charlie said the pretzel part was good but the rest of it--that would be the Kashi part pretty much--was weird. No kidding.

John wanted some. I put about three tiny grains of coated cereal in his mouth. About five seconds later he said, "I don't want it" and began spitting it out into my hand which I was lucky enough to get there in time to catch most of what he was spitting.

Wotears. I left the tin of them with the Darringtons. Ann hinted she might throw them out. I assured her I have plenty more at home, like 50. I wonder if any of those Schiess boys might eat them. Nah.

Ta dah da da dah da da dah dum

I heard Liszt's Les Preludes today. Always I think of my mother when I hear it.

She directed a women's singing group for many years, and one of their grandest, most ambitious projects for learning and performing was a choral (women's) arrangement of that lengthy piece, with words quite appropriate to the very dramatic music. Lengthy it was but certainly shortened from the symphonic version, the original music.

I'd like to hear that again. See her working so hard to get her singers to work hard. She knew how to do it.

Is there a place? Will there be a time when we can hear and see all those things and people we loved so much? I count on there being that time and place, or perhaps that place without the limits of time.

One thing I'd like to have time to do here and now is visit with my sisters and brothers about such things.

On Motherhood, Sort of

It's a line from a song by Ann Heaton: "Could you wait a little longer?" spoken to the baby she is not about to be pregnant with because she isn't ready for that. I have no argument with it. After all, I'm the one who said, "Once you're a mother, you're never not a mother." It's something you shouldn't rush into without thought. (As if even half the parents in this world gave it any thought.)

During the interview after her song she said, "I really want to be a mom, but I want to wait until I get myself all okay, life and everything figured out."

I say, "Commendable, laudable, shouldn't we all have done that." I also say, "How long might it take, and good luck with that," and some other smart remark--if I thought of one--that would indicate that I think such an approach naive, at least.

Seven children--and I would not give away even a hair on any one of their heads--and nearly twenty grandchildren later, living in the last while of my 60s, I say, "There's a lot to figure out, and I still don't have much of it done."

Is it just me? Am I slow? Should I still be waiting?

Christmas Carols

Angels from the realms of glory
Wing your way o'er all the earth.
Ye, who sang creations story
Now proclaim Messiah's birth.
Come and worship, come and worship,
Worship Christ, the newborn king.

* * *

The holly and the ivy,
When they are both full grown,
Of all the trees that are in the wood
The holly bears the crown.
O the rising of the sun
And the running of the deer,
The playing of the merry organ,
Sweet singing in the choir.

The holly bears a berry
As red as any blood.
And Mary bore sweet Jesus Christ
To do poor sinners good.
O the rising of the sun
And the running of the deer,
The playing of the merry organ,
Sweet singing in the choir.

* * *

Good Christian men rejoice
With heart and soul and voice.
Give ye heed to what we say:
News, news, Jesus Christ is born today.
Ox and ass before him bow,
And he is in his manger now.
Christ is born today!
Christ is born today!

I love the music of Christmas, love to hear it and to sing it. These carols we seldom sing, at least in my society, and they were running through my head as I woke this morning. I wanted to put them here, so I did. From memory.

The Holly and the Ivy has six verses, and I'm sure of only four of them. As you see, I included only two.

This last is a carol my brother Sterling and I sang together. He played the guitar and we both sang. I've never seen it written, and I just sang the words he remembered. Performances were quite spontaneous, as I recall, but always a pleasure for me. I wish we could do that again this year. Here is the song as we sang it.

Virgin Mary had a little baby.
Oh, glory hallelujah!
Oh, pretty little baby.
Glory be to the newborn king.

What shall we call this pretty little baby?
Oh, glory hallelujah!
Oh, pretty little baby.
Glory be to the newborn king.

Some call him one thing. People call him Jesus.
Oh, glory hallelujah!
Oh, pretty little baby.
Glory be to the newborn king.

Some call him one thing. I call him Savior.
Oh, glory hallelujah!
Oh, pretty little baby.
Glory be to the newborn king.

Weather Matters

Weather is not the only thing on my mind. I am not one who watches the weather channel or even the nightly report. I do have an outdoor thermometer stuck on my kitchen window. That is handy, I guess, but I only have it because of my friend who is a weather . . . what? aficionado? nut? It's her doing.

But times like now weather becomes almost an hourly issue. Is it snowing? Will it snow? What? rain expected tomorrow? (And it is. I have just looked online here.) Because one has to negotiate it, get out into it, go places through it. And so I have been outside at 3 AM--can't sleep anyway--just checking on things to see how it will be when I have to drive in the morning, go to church.

While I was out there I was thinking:

1. I'm not a person who likes to be trapped, even in her own home. Don't know anyone who is.
   
2. One of these days I'll need to get those Christmas errands done.
   
3. Maybe get a tree Monday. Guess we'll see how the weather is.

And I've knocked down some of the icicles that melt onto my front walkway, and then the melt freezes, makes an icy patch right near my front door. I'll spread down some of that snow melt on that spot. It's the snow melt stuff I bought last year. It worked fine then, and so we'll see if it's still good this year.

Strange middle-of-the-night behavior, I suppose. But who's surprised?

Finally

So I think this is finished. At least I'll put it away.

Wintering

Carol Schiess

We’ve seen

the last hurried plunge of leaves--

swept off by an impatient wind--

leaves whose anxious yellows

and reds had hung on late,

heightened the sky's bold blue

and held sunlight in the trees.

Color dies

with the passing of the leaves

and nature pushes time

into colder, briefer days.

Trees look older now,

stripped, shamed,

something pitiful revealed

in the collective reaching skyward

of frail limbs.

In winter,

a fearful presence

inhabits the lowering clouds,

waits beneath a hardened earth.

We, in that season,

are left without comfort,

as if, like the trees,

we have forgotten

what we know.

Report

Wintering

Carol Schiess

We’ve seen

the last hurried plunge of leaves,

the oak, ash, honey locust,

whose reds and yellows

have heightened the sky's bold blue

and held sunlight in the trees.

Color dies

with the passing of the leaves

and nature pushes time

into colder, briefer days.

Trees look older now,

stripped, shamed,

something pitiful revealed

in the collective reaching skyward

of frail limbs.

In winter,

a fearful presence

inhabits the lowering clouds,

waits beneath a hardened earth.

We, in that season,

are left without comfort,

as if, like the trees,

we have forgotten

what we know.

I'm not sure this is done. I've been messing with the first stanza this morning. There's something about the way I had it before that seems right, but maybe I'll just leave it this way for a while and look again later. But here's something of what my writing group said.

N said the wind couldn't be impatient. This stunned me, coming as it did from one who is a very good poet and who ought to know that the wind can be what I say it is,--within some limits, I suppose--and not just as a poet but as a person who "feels" the wind is gentle or disturbing or impatient. But I have taken it out and put it back in at least a dozen times because I'm not sure if it belongs, since I have used that word plunge, which I will keep.

S said she liked the word embers instead of ambers. (See an earlier version.) Okay, I thought, but not in this poem.

D said to change the verb "have" in the first stanza to "had." That makes sense, and I did it. But then I undid it, because I like "have" better.

Both S and D did not like the colors. I didn't feel good about them either. Too many modifiers, and I was especially worried about the fuchsia pinks. When D said the fuchsia pinks reminded her of a prom dress, then I knew why I was worried. They both said to leave the colors out entirely. I don't want prom dresses in the poem, but I did and do want some color there. I've added a few trees that were late in losing their leaves and whose leaves are red or yellow. We'll see about that.

D said to put the middle part together this way:

Color dies

with the passing of the leaves

and nature pushes time

into colder, briefer days.

In winter,

a fearful presence

inhabits the lowering clouds,

waits beneath a hardened earth.

Trees look older now,

stripped, shamed,

something pitiful revealed

in the collective reaching skyward

of frail limbs.

We, in that season,

are left without comfort,

as if, like the trees,

we have forgotten

what we know.

That makes sense, but not quite the sense I was thinking of when I wrote the poem. Besides, I think the words "colder" and "older" belong close together.

I took the last line off, about spring coming, because 1. perhaps the idea of spring is implicit, and that is enough, and 2. to leave some ambiguity there.

I came from the writing meeting very pleased. It's always a good thing when other writers take your writing seriously and offer their ideas. In the end, I weigh their ideas and, you know, make the final decision. As I said, I'm not sure this poem is finished.

Tomorrow . . .

is my writing meeting. I'll take my Wintering poem, both versions, and see what they say. They will have things to say, I have no doubt of it.

I'll report back.