During the Christmas break, I was catching up on some magazine reading to reduce some piles around here. Today, I read a really beautiful interview with Kim Rosen about the role of poetry in our lives called "Written on the Bones" by Alison Luterman. The title comes from a Tibetan saying for how our songs, stories, and poetry are passed down without being written down - like how a musician might know how to play a song he's heard without ever having read the sheet music. The interview was in The Sun, which is a magazine that has kindly bought a few photos from me over the years.
I'm not a big fan of poetry per se, but after reading this interview, I think maybe in the New Year I will try to read a poem each.... wait for it... week. Let's not get carried away with anything daily! Now, if only I hadn't given away all those English Major books just this year!
Anyway, at the end of the article was this poem. It spoke to me about my garden failures and successes, the lovely cast of international friends I have in my life and most of all about letting go of perfection. I find that especially when it comes to anything ranging from cooking to photo making to writing, I am often paralyzed for fear it will be amateurish or foolish. I surround myself with so many talented friends and colleagues in those areas, I fear I simply won't be good enough. And I'll be a disappointment to them and to my own dreams.
So, maybe along with some poetry reading, I'll let go and just let my words and photos stretch into sentences and stories, no matter how weedy... Oh, and I'll plant that quinoa and not be too disappointed if it doesn't flower and bloom as beautifully as it does in my mind or on the package.
WITHOUT TENDING
Just down the road a row of basil stands tight
in plastic bags, a line of buoys in a frigid sea,
while our yard lies open in the bitter cold.
I confess I didn't know which plants
to cover, so I left them all to freeze.
And back in the summer I never
thinned the lettuce or tried to stop
the birds from carrying off
our spinach, corn, and sunflowers.
Even my students, adults from various
continents, speak an English I don't
always correct:
"poultry" for poetry
"bookkeeper" instead of librarian,
"cole" without the "slaw" to mean cabbage.
Yet we plow along, the odd bunch of us,
in rows like my garden, from whose dry
soil springs a surprising pepper crop,
a generous mass of rosemary. And
my students' words, small as seeds, stretch somehow
into sentences: weedy, bright.
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