A Poem For A Friday

The Chorus
Craig Michael Teicher

1.
It's, you know, the part that repeats,
the bit you're supposed
to remember, the bit that bears

repeating, the part that means
something new
each time, something different,

and the same thing, too,
the thing you can't forget,
that gets stuck in your head.

So, like, childhood
is endless and over
almost as soon as it begins?

Yeah, like that. Ten years
shrinks like the pages
of a water-damaged book.

No, the pages don't really shrink
or shrivel, they crinkle, get kinda
crisp and brittle, but

time's like that, a wrinkle,
and suddenly you've been
married as long as

you were ever a kid,
ever awash in the interminable
Thursday of your first ten years, when

three months was an aeon, when,
like, childhood was endless
and over as soon as it began.

See what I did there? Shifted
the refrain into the middle.
Yeah, time is like that, and

2.
suddenly your newborn
is ten and your wife
is celebrating the birthday

only grownups do,
and you must be older
than your mom was

at your age, and it's not
Thursday -- was it ever? And the two
pills you have to take every night.

How is it Sunday, I mean
Monday, this morning, your alarm,
your coffee grumbling, thunder,

and the kids (two of them,
suddenly) are out the door, and
their childhood is

endless and and already over
as soon as it begins, and
you're on the bus to work. See what

I did there? I don't. The four
pills you have to take three
times every day, you might

3.
as well be already
at your desk, your deathbed,
holding your daughter's

grownup hand, you
hope, the hospital calm and
clean, like the one your mother

died in, and there's hopefully
money somewhere to take care
of everything, and this

is like childhood, endless
and over as soon as it begins,
or as close as you'll ever get

again -- see what I did
there? Did you
see? Did anyone?

My brain is in an allergy-induced haze, but I saw this poem a few weeks ago and can't stop thinking about it. This idea of aging, that feeling that your childhood feels interminable when you're in it, then it suddenly rushes by along with your children's childhoods and then, before you know it, your life. You constantly believe you're too young to be in this place, you're "older than your mom was at your age," and then bam, you're at the end, and it's over as soon as it began.

It's also an example of a poem's structure working wondrously to emphasize its theme. I love the way the poet utilizes line breaks, short little stanzas, and commas to make it all a bit jerky like the narrator is being tugged back and forth between youth and age, sort of how I imagine we all feel as we go through the constant, inevitable plod toward the end.

On that uplifting note, have a happy weekend, hahaha!!!!

Pupdate

I suppose he's not really a puppy anymore since he is likely a full year old now. Where did that time go? I still feel slight shudders of horror when I think about how difficult that early puppy time was for me. He was cute, but egads, puppy life was challenging. But he's growing up. Literally. Lankier and lankier these days with his long scrawny legs and his seemingly longer tail. Oddball mystery mix of breeds, but a little love bug too, still trying to curl up in our laps whenever he has the opportunity. He's loving lake life too, observing everything from the deck and settling into that relaxing feeling as summer creeps closer. He's a good boy!

W.S. Merwin

Early last Friday morning, I came out of a dream hysterically sobbing. I couldn’t stop. In the dream, we were in this scenario where you could bring your dog back to life, but you could only do it once. It was time to send Merwin away again, and I was sitting on the floor with him in my lap, hugging him tightly, desperate to hold on to him awhile longer. I can’t think about this dream without losing it again. It was so real, bringing the grief and sadness surging back.

As it turns out, one of my all-time favorite individuals, the poet W.S. Merwin, passed away in his sleep early that morning around the same time I woke from my dream.

The oddities of that juxtaposition aside, the devastation came flooding back when I learned of W.S. Merwin’s death. I am hard pressed to put into words what his work has meant for the world, for poetry, for me. Arguably, he is one of the most decorated contemporary poets, having gathered almost all the prominent accolades and awards during his long career.

But beyond the awards and acclaim, I think that he likely had an uncelebrated and possibly unknown profound impact on hundreds of thousands of individual little humans. Me, for one.

I purchased his book, The Rain in the Trees, because it was required reading for a writing workshop at Hamilton College. With the guidance of great professors, his was some of the first poetry I worked to comprehend in any depth. He was the launch pad for a life-long pursuit. I hated that feeling of not grasping exactly what was going on in his poems, but also luxuriated in that same ambiguity. I loved the idea that each word could be dissected, analyzed, listened to, and savored. Every word was enormously meaningful in a poem - they were all placed there for a specific reason or, more likely, hundreds of specific reasons.

As part of my Creative Writing major, I spent hours writing poetry, always with a pencil and always the evening before the poem had to be submitted for review by my classmates. The best part about the process was deliberating over the “right” word. Those moments poring through the thesaurus, writing down, crossing out, hemming, hawing and then finally feeling that tiny thrill when the word “stuck.” Those moments were truly some of my favorite memories of creating anything.

This isn’t a story of Merwin inspiring me to become a poet. It’s a story of him inspiring everything. Of him being this beautiful thread in my life, one that started in college, carried me through New York, accompanied me through love and loss, and stuck with me so profoundly that we gave his name to our dog, who was, as absolutely ridiculous as it sounds, one of the most significant loves of my life. I used Merwin’s work and my love for the dog Merwin to start this blog, a context for reestablishing the thrill of creating that I hadn’t realized I had missed so dreadfully. I have never read another poet’s work and had the same reactions, feelings, or utter awe and admiration for what he could do on a page. I have never met so many of one poet’s works that absolutely just sang to me.

I realized this past year, first with Paul Taylor’s passing then with Mary Oliver’s that I hadn’t yet truly acknowledged the impact my artistic icons have had on me. As silly as it may sound, I feel such a profound loss now that this trifecta has moved on. These people shaped my interest in dance, in poetry, in understanding people, in creating, and in savoring how words or movement can brilliantly illuminate nature or grief or injustice or death in ways that evoke such compelling feeling around what it means to see this world and to be in this world. How amazing they were to share this beauty with us and how utterly sad there will be no more of it from their great minds.

There is so much more to say about W.S. Merwin, likely so many more important things to thank him for and to relay around his life's work, but for now, it just feels like the Merwins' "absence has gone through me / like thread through a needle / everything I do is stitched with its color."

Pushing The Boundaries

Ollie came in from going outside this morning, dashed down the hall, and immediately leapt onto the bed. With the exception of one time when he was invited up, he has never been on a human bed before, so needless to say, I was shocked. I was also still in the bed so when he began freaking out and running circles on said bed, I was even more shocked. He also kept running away from us as we tried to get him off the bed. I finally got him down, he zoomed around like a freak, then jumped back up! They say pups are especially spirited and rambunctious (read: disobedient and out of control) as they enter adolescence at around 6 months. Ollie is 8 months. He's testing the waters. Yay.

But he's cute. And he still likes to sit on our laps. Aside from putting my feet to sleep faster than he did when he was 20 pounds lighter, I love those little moments when he snuggles up. He's a keeper.

A Poem For Aging

In the Basement of the Goodwill Store
Ted Kooser

In musty light, in the thin brown air
of damp carpet, doll heads and rust,
beneath long rows of sharp footfalls
like nails in a lid, an old man stands
trying on glasses, lifting each pair
from the box like a glittering fish
and holding it up to the light
of a dirty bulb. Near him, a heap
of enameled pans as white as skulls
looms in the catacomb shadows,
and old toilets with dry red throats
cough up bouquets of curtain rods.

You've seen him somewhere before.
He's wearing the green leisure suit
you threw out with the garbage,
and the Christmas tie you hated,
and the ventilated wingtip shoes
you found in your father's closet
and wore as a joke. And the glasses
which finally fit him, through which
he looks to see you looking back --
two mirrors which flash and glance--
are those through which one day
you too will look down over the years,
when you have grown old and thin
and no longer particular,
and the things you once thought
you were rid of forever
have taken you back in their arms.

I was just talking with my sister-in-law about poetry this weekend. We commented on how each word in a poem is so crucial, obviously much more so than in fiction or other prose. I talked about how much I loved that process when writing - the often hours-long search for the exact right word - the one that sounded sharp or soft, the one that alluded to a specific feeling without naming the feeling, the one that had the correct number of syllables, the one that told a larger story than just the word itself. The pursuit of the perfect word is what I remember really treasuring about poetry writing.

This poem exhibits that idea so perfectly. Musty, nails in a lid, skulls, catacomb, old, cough. Little nods to age. Then we switch to the second stanza and that language recedes, becoming more reflective. The narrator finds bits of himself, both literally and figuratively, in this man, a look up the road at what was and down the road at what is to come. The mirrored glasses reinforce this perspective, a literal reflection and also a tool for looking, for seeing better, both the past and the future.

As usual, I can't properly describe what I love about this poem and how amazed I am by the poet's expertise. Maybe that's part of what makes it so good. It's nearly impossible for bodies to do some of the things ballerinas do, but it appears graceful and effortless to the observer. This poem seems effortless. I love it.

Aging

I've had trouble with my birthday the past few years. Maybe it's the steady creep towards 40 or feeling unsettled in various aspects of life, but turning 37 and 38 were both a struggle. So I was a little trepidatious when 39 loomed at the end of December's calendar. 

It was great! We spent the extended weekend at the lake, our first time up north since early November. Pete and Sille joined us, we adventured to Portland for a visit to the art museum, played a bunch of games, ate delicious food (omg, Simon made sticky toffee pudding and it was spectacular), walked along the Cotton Valley Rail Trail, and took some tentative steps onto what we think was a solidly frozen Round Pond. It was relaxing, refreshing, fun, and peaceful. Getting old ain't so bad after all.

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas from our fam to yours.
(Not pictured: Treat in my extended hand...bribes!)

1 Ollie 'Til Christmas

Goofy Santa chomper.

2 Ollies 'Til Christmas

Um, I dunno.

3 Ollies 'Til Christmas

Cuteness coming 'atcha.