Fireflies

By Fred Chappell

The children race now here by the ivied fence,
gather squealing now there by the lily border.
The evening calms the quickened air, immense
and warm; its veil is pierced with fire. The order
of space discloses as pair by pair porch lights
carve shadows. Cool phosphors flare when dark
permits yearning to signal where, with spark
and pause and spark, the fireflies are, the sites
they spiral when they aspire, with carefree ardor
busy, to embrace a star that draws them thence.

Like children we stand and stare, watching the field
that twinkles where gold wisps fare to the end
of dusk, as the sudden sphere, ivory shield
aloft, of moon stands clear of the world's far bend.

I miss being a child and running through the backyard catching fireflies. I wish that all I had to worry about right now was if i poked enough holes in the lid of the firefly jar.

The Sisters of Charity of New York

I recently posted a long piece that I wrote last semester for my advanced reporting class on my other blog. It was a very important piece for me personally because I was writing about religious life and I was constantly reminded of experiences from my childhood. In honor of the Easter holiday starting tonight (if you are Catholic like me), I thought I would post the link to it here too. Below is the slideshow that I made to go with it.

In Honor of the First Day of Poetry Month

A Story
Philip Levine

Everyone loves a story. Let's begin with a house.
We can fill it with careful rooms and fill the rooms
with things—tables, chairs, cupboards, drawers
closed to hide tiny beds where children once slept
or big drawers that yawn open to reveal
precisely folded garments washed half to death,
unsoiled, stale, and waiting to be worn out.
There must be a kitchen, and the kitchen
must have a stove, perhaps a big iron one
with a fat black pipe that vanishes into the ceiling
to reach the sky and exhale its smells and collusions.
This was the center of whatever family life
was here, this and the sink gone yellow
around the drain where the water, dirty or pure,
ran off with no explanation, somehow like the point
of this, the story we promised and may yet deliver.
Make no mistake, a family was here. You see
the path worn into the linoleum where the wood,
gray and certainly pine, shows through.
Father stood there in the middle of his life
to call to the heavens he imagined above the roof
must surely be listening. When no one answered
you can see where his heel came down again
and again, even though he'd been taught
never to demand. Not that life was especially cruel;
they had well water they pumped at first,
a stove that gave heat, a mother who stood
at the sink at all hours and gazed longingly
to where the woods once held the voices
of small bears—themselves a family—and the songs
of birds long fled once the deep woods surrendered
one tree at a time after the workmen arrived
with jugs of hot coffee. The worn spot on the sill
is where Mother rested her head when no one saw,
those two stained ridges were handholds
she relied on; they never let her down.
Where is she now? You think you have a right
to know everything? The children tiny enough
to inhabit cupboards, large enough to have rooms
of their own and to abandon them, the father
with his right hand raised against the sky?
If those questions are too personal, then tell us,
where are the woods? They had to have been
because the continent was clothed in trees.
We all read that in school and knew it to be true.
Yet all we see are houses, rows and rows
of houses as far as sight, and where sight vanishes
into nothing, into the new world no one has seen,
there has to be more than dust, wind-borne particles
of burning earth, the earth we lost, and nothing else.

I Don't Know

I haven't written in a few weeks. Mostly because I have been at home in Nebraska. I spent a few days with my sister in Omaha and then a few in Friend with my mom.

While I was home, I started noticing a confidence building in myself. Something that didn't have anything to do with my accomplishments or successes. It was just a confidence in me, as an individual.

I don't know where I will be a year from today. I don't know what I will be doing six months from now. I don't even know what mid-May, only two months away, will bring for me. But I am comfortable with that ambiguity in a way I've never been before.

I was sitting at a table in the bar my mom owns with several of her regular customers drinking cheap beer and discussing whatever came to mind. Conversation turned to me and what I am planning to do with my life just as it usually does when I am home.

I confidently looked them in the eyes and said that I really wasn't sure.

"Do you have any ideas?" they asked.

"Well, yes. I have some ideas, but I just don't know what I will do," I responded.

The middle aged members of our small community just looked at me like I was silly. They weren't really sure what to say or do, so they nodded their heads and changed the topic. (Then again, almost everything I do leaves them with a bit of a puzzled look.)

I, on the other hand, have never felt more confident about an answer. I'm not scared. Not scared of the future at least, or of the unpredictable.

I am slightly surprised by my confidence.

Alive and Well

So damn easy to say that life's so hard

Everybody's got their share of battle scars
As for me I'd like to thank my lucky stars that
I'm alive and well

It'd be easy to add up all the pain
And all the dreams you've sat and watch go up in flames
Dwell on the wreckage as it smolders in the rain
But not me... I'm alive

These are lyrics from one of the few country songs I actually really like. I heard it a couple of months ago while I was riding with my mom. The lyrics aren't half bad advice but the haunting melody is what really gets me. Check out the video below.

A ride on the Roosevelt Island Tramway

I went for a ride on the tram before it closed for renovations. It was a great way to spend a snowy afternoon!

Finally feeling a bit like Spring...

Cold Spring
By Lawrence Raab

The last few gray sheets of snow are gone,

winter’s scraps and leavings lowered

to a common level. A sudden jolt

of weather pushed us outside, and now

this larger world once again belongs to us.

I stand at the edge of it, beside the house,

listening to the stream we haven’t heard

since fall, and I imagine one day thinking

back to this hour and blaming myself

for my worries, my foolishness, today’s choices

having become the accomplished

facts of change, accepted

or forgotten. The woods are a mangle

of lines, yet delicate, yet precise,

when I take the time to look closely.

If I’m not happy it must be my own fault.

At the edge of the lawn my wife

bends down to uncover a flower, then another.

The first splurge of crocuses.

And for a moment the sweep and shudder

of the wind seems indistinguishable

from the steady furl of water

just beyond her.