Tag: midsummer

Honeymoon sonnet

Honeymoon epiphany

Epiphanies

We come now to the winter of our years
(Where did the autumn with its pleasures go?)
Our roof will all too soon be cloaked with snow,
So, come, let’s stoke our fire against the fears.

It seems another life ago, my dear,
That full of grace you pilgrim sat aglow
Enkindled so this prodigal would know
That grace was free and grace was very near.

Midsummer’s eve brought more epiphanies
Of spotless bride adorned, redeemed, in white,
Too ill for customary liberties,
So wan, yet still for these sore eyes a sight.
Then! Over Lake Champlain the full moon sees
A railway sleeper car rock through the night.

(2013)

Notes:

When love is good and it lasts, it can be tempting to idealize its beginnings.

But, the very first time I saw my wife, she was glowing. I kid you not. Sitting in the second row of a darkened auditorium listening to the Chaplain of the U.S. Senate, there she was — surrounded by a golden aura.

At the time, I was a reporter for a small suburban weekly paper, and was there on assignment. I had a camera, but was so befuddled I failed to get the shot. (Of the Glowing Girl, that is.) You might argue I was imagining things, but I don’t think so. I’m not given to visions nor hallucinations. I’ve never witnessed anything like it before or since.

I kept my eye on her while I got my story. But at the end of the program, she went right up to the speaker. I figured she must be with the group of important people who had accompanied him from Washington, D.C.

So, I put The Glowing Girl out of mind and tried to forget about her.

Fortunately for me, she turned up again a couple of weeks later at church. It turns out she was a friend of a friend, who introduced us and immediately left us alone. I didn’t let her get away a second time.

I think the whole experience was a special gift for a fellow a bit slow on the uptake, who needed a sign to notice a good thing right under my nose.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

We were married three years later at Midsummer. She was sick and only made it through the festivities with the help of cold medicine. The next morning we flew out of town to New York, and the very next night, took an overnight train to Montreal.

I’ve been a fan of railway travel ever since.

Midsummer Haiku, Again

Midsummer sunset over the Olympics

The pasture is brown,
and snow has left the mountains.
But the sky. The sky!

NOTES:  Late summer signs are coming early to the Pacific Northwest this year.  This past winter we broke a 122 year record for rainfall in Seattle.  We got 44.67 inches of rain from October through April.  Which was the wettest such stretch since record-keeping began in 1895. (We rack up almost 9 inches in February alone.)

So, of course, we’re now working on a rainless record.   Nothing since June 17.

But not to worry.  This is the Pacific Northwest.  No matter how dry it gets this summer, we know that the rains will return in the fall and remain with us for what seems like forever.  So we can relax and appreciate the beauty around us.

Midsummer Haiku

Blonde girl walks a black dog
Ah! Midsummer sun.
Blonde girl walking a black dog.
All downhill from here.

Notes: Something about the light and smell in the air this afternoon made me think of this little poem from last year.

A favorite midsummer poem

Robert Frost
Robert Frost, looking much the poet

I don’t know about you, but I’ve always seen the July 4th holiday as the turning point for summer.

The days have just started to get shorter. The foliage starts to brown, and even though it’s two full months before September, there is a sense that the glorious hurrah of summer will all come to an end all too soon.

“The Oven Bird” by Robert Frost says all this and more to me.

It’s just a little sonnet.  Fourteen lines in all.

It’s worth a look to read the whole poem, but several of the lines are little gems that stand alone. Writing about the song of the little oven bird, Frost says:

He says the early petal-fall is past
When pear and cherry bloom went down in showers,

And, just a couple of lines later,

He says the highway dust is over all.

That is a poignant, dusty image, familiar to anyone who has lived in the country. It signals that the spring rains are definitely over, and you’ve entered that long, hot stretch that ends with the on-coming fall.  Time is moving ahead.

The poem wraps up with a wonderful final two lines:

The question that he frames in all but words
Is what to make of a diminished thing.

A good question to ask any time of year, or at any time of life.

 

Honeymoon sonnet

The happy couple honeymooning in Montreal
Epiphanies

We come now to the winter of our years
(Where did the autumn with its pleasures go?)
Our roof will all too soon be cloaked with snow,
So, come, let’s stoke our fire against the fears.

It seems another life ago, my dear,
That full of grace you pilgrim sat aglow
Enkindled so this prodigal would know
That grace was free and grace was very near.

Midsummer’s eve brought more epiphanies
Of spotless bride adorned, redeemed, in white,
Too ill for customary liberties,
So wan, yet still for these sore eyes a sight.
Then! Over Lake Champlain the full moon sees
A railway sleeper car rock through the night.

Notes:

When love is good and it lasts, it can be tempting to idealize its beginnings.

But, the very first time I saw my wife, she was glowing. I kid you not. Sitting in the second row of a darkened auditorium listening to the Chaplain of the U.S. Senate, there she was —  surrounded by a golden aura.

At the time, I was a reporter for a small suburban weekly paper, and was there on assignment.  I had a camera, but was so befuddled I failed to get the shot. You might argue I was imagining things, but I don’t think so. I’m not given to visions nor hallucinations. I’ve never witnessed anything like it before or since.

I kept my eye on her while I got my story.  But at the end of the program, she went right up to the speaker.  I figured she must be with the group of important people who had accompanied him from Washington, D.C.

So, I put The Glowing Girl out of mind and tried to forget about her.

Fortunately for me, she turned up again a couple of weeks later at church.  She was a friend of a friend, who introduced us and immediately left us alone.  I didn’t let her get away a second time.

I think the whole experience was a special gift for a fellow a bit slow on the uptake, who needed a sign to notice a good thing right under my nose.

That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.

We were married at Midsummer.  She was sick and only made it through the festivities with the help of cold medicine.  The next morning we flew out of town to New York, and the very next night, took an overnight train to Montreal.

I’ve been a fan of railway travel ever since.

Midsummer Anniversary Poem

Here comes midsummer's milestone of our love
Here Comes Midsummer’s Milestone

Here comes midsummer’s milestone of our love,
Years since our selfish selves we pledged to yield,
So we’re as broken-in now as the glove,
I wore so long ago while in the field.

Fresh from the store unworn straight to my room,
Rubbed in the oil and every crease explored,
All through the night I savored the perfume,
The musky linseed leather I adored.

Come sober daylight with our job to do,
All awkward stiff not giving either way,
How many sweaty strivings’ deja vu
It took before we as one flesh could play.

Some ragged days I’d spit and pound the palm,
Or hurl the thing against the dugout wall,
But all the while a magic mute and calm
Mutated hand to glove with every ball.

The softening was gradual but sure.
Soon nerves and muscles seemed just like they spanned
From fingertips to join the glove secure,
As if I had been born with one webbed hand.

We’ve come now to the eve of middle age,
Well worn but with a lot of sport to go.
We must each for the other one assuage
Those stinging blows life certainly will throw.

We’ve held through wins and losses and through rain,
That etched new cracks not there at all before.
But loves like this were made to take the strain,
Just like that piece of cowhide that I wore.

Notes:

Not long ago, I asked my wife if she had a favorite poem.  Her blink reaction was, “the one about the baseball glove.”

So, that is what she gets on the eve of  our 31st anniversary.  A re-run.

It was written sometime in the early 1990s.  We were young and just starting a family.  I had a job I absolutely hated.  I would take long lunch breaks and write poems parked by the side of Lake of the Isles in Minneapolis.

Long before I discovered girls, back in Marshall, MO, my first love was baseball.

I cannot begin to total up the hours spent playing baseball, watching baseball, collecting baseball cards, sorting baseball cards, reading about baseball, and dreaming about playing in the World Series.

I knew the starting line-ups of both the St. Louis Cardinals and the Kansas City A’s by heart.

When I played one-man whiffle ball against my friend Royce, we would pick a team and go through the line up as each individual player. If the guy batted right, we batted right. If he batted left, we batted left.

(We drew the line at pitching left-handed, because neither of us was truly ambidextrous.)

Our spare time was spent searching for discarded pop bottles which we could turn into the neighborhood grocery store for two cents apiece. Every 5 bottles meant we could buy two more packs of baseball cards.

Somewhere between the ages of 12 and 13, we moved on to other interests. A long and winding path led me to the love of my life.

We were married 31 years ago today.

The inspirations for this poem are multiple. Several years ago, it was coming on to midsummer and my wedding anniversary.

I was feeling that sense of my youth slipping away. But, despite the oppressive job I was enduring, I was confident that good things still lay ahead.

I was also listening to a lot of Van Morrison. His song “Madame George” was stuck in my head. (Quite possible the most poignant song ever written.)

In particular, I was hearing the line where Van does his improvisational thing where he repeats the words “love” and “glove” over and over in an almost hypnotic chant.

My story is about a very different glove, and a very different love. But that merging of the two words was lodged in my mind.

The result of all of this ferment was this poem.

The only time I’ve ever read it in public, I was told it was “an audacious metaphor.”

I’ll take that.

Today, upon the occasion of my 31th wedding anniversary, I submit this little poem. It’s as true today as when I wrote it years ago