In Which I Talk To A Dead Poet About Life

July 22, 2013 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 7 Comments

{In which I write a letter to Robert Louis Stevenson regarding his poem entitled “Happy Thought” from A Child’s Garden of Verses}

Dear Bob:

You don’t mind if I call you Bob do you? Good. These words of yours are framed and hanging on the wall of our mountain home. So I have the good fortune of viewing them often. And have I told you how very much I appreciate the beauty of your poetry and especially this verse.

But would you please tell me a little of what you mean. Because I have not seen a happy King. Though they may exist or they may have existed. I am sure some have been happy. But some are just mean. And really there is so much responsibility that comes with being King.

So I doubt. And I am not normally a doubting person who wears a dour face. Rather I see the world as full of promise and hope, mercy and grace. But a happy king or queen I have not seen, though the modern day ones seem truly content. And this is not meant to be political discontent. Or even about politics, no not at all. But rather about Joy and its source and how we are wired by God. To love, others and moments that cover us in delight. To give and to serve, to offer and bow low and Christ-like.

Bob, maybe you wrote at a time when Royals were filled with grins from their things. Or maybe I am too literal reading your verse. Surely you don’t believe they were truly happy, as a result of their things.

But really that is not the point. The point is can man be truly happy as a result of his things? Well maybe if things are all gifts from above. I think you meant things that came straight from God.

Because more and more I find that the world is filled with wonderful things that aren’t really things,not at all. Like miracles and healing. And beauty at nightfall.

The second a firefly lights up his small light. And you happen to be there to see it all aglow. Or when the hummingbird lights on a bush. And the Earth is still while he sips with his tiney tiny bill. Or God wonders and marvels like the stars in the sky. That gather up like a dipper so big or so small.

There are “things” such as forgiveness and mending of ways, hope and fresh starts after seasons of long wait. New born babies and reconciled husbands and wives. Marriage and family, tenderness, meekness and soothing a soul. Helping the weary and drying a tear. The end of war.

There are things like laughter so deep that you ache when you stop, long enough to catch your breath, breath deep and get started, all over again.

There are smells like the Blue Ridge in July, with wildflowers, cut grass and fresh soil from the earth, swirling and landing up under your nose, like fresh baked treats rising up to the sky and toes tickled by a cold dog nose.

There are families gathered around by the fire, at night, in the summer telling stories while curled up in a ball, savoring the gift of their days, that end too often with no warning none at all. That pull the curtain on our life like the end of a play.

But I know your heart and with poets that matters a lot, to me anyway. I want people to see my heart when they read what I say.

I think you meant wonder and discovery ,not things. Though things in themselves are not saved just for Kings.

And Kings can not be happy surrounded by things. Because God made us. all peoples, to love others not things. And things are not terrible, no not at all.

For there is the spring at the turn, the bend in the road, at the bottom of the hill. Where I love to stop every night and every year, taking sips and standing there quiet and still.

And the moon when it is full, is technically a thing.

And then there is Peace and Patience, Charity and Faith.

God grabs our hearts with a world full of “things”. But careful we most be and delicately we must trod.

Because things can rob us of time with each other and God, He knows that the things can get in the way.

Robert, I knew what you meant and were trying to say. And I think Robert sounds more respectful than Bob. And I choose respect and dignity. They are two very valuable things.

Sometimes it is fun just to write words that play
with poets that have gone before
whose words I adore
and have a laugh on a whim and giggle each day
and since you’ve been gone things have gotten quite serious
I should say
Your words are a gift
Every line word and phrase
And I wonder what you would think of
“Things” these day.

Signed,

An Admiring Poet Fond Of Your Work

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

Joining Laura at Laura Boggess dot com

On The First Day The Tree Went Up The Memories Flooded In

December 3, 2012December 3, 2012 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 9 Comments

We snip. We cut. We add we subtract. And we upgrade, downgrade, go outside, inside. Evolving and changing our traditions a little more, a little less, a little different every year.

But there is always a tree. And some years two.

Its as if she were the archivist for our very lives. She, an archeologist on a dig into the very soil of our living. She,the record keeper and documentarian of family and the unfurling of the days of our lives.

And she asks for so very little. Just water to keep her from dropping needles, just water to sustain her for a season.

We have picked up, boxed up and moved out of houses and homes. Like salting soup, who measures, counts, it adds taste and flavor and you just keep shaking the shaker until its right. You don’t count and I am not counting now. But it feels like a nice big number.

I remember the trees always, some how, some way, some size, there is always a tree to hold up the recording of child’s art or First Christmas married ornaments bought to fill the tree. And in the upside down paradox of the tree’s economy, the construction paper ones are more precious than the sterling silver ornaments from stores with names which are hallmarks of fine gifts.

And in the paradox of the tree, the ones hanging by a thread and hanging with yarn are finer, much more valuable than the big glass ones which break, by twos and by two dozens it seems, every year.

As with the paradox held in her limbs, so too in life — the meek shall inherit the earth and he who is last will be first. Simple is sweetest and the primitive ones hold memories like facets in a diamond, the year, the child, the size of hand. The growing life held on the steadfast trees.

There are strange stories that she could tell, this historian of the home. The silver ornaments found in the yard saved just in the nick of time from the trash heap or recycler. And months later in the back of the car, a favorite retrieved, saved thankfully from being lost and tossed.

When I was a child, a big child, I curled up under the tree with my favorite cat. And it smelled and looked and felt like the most wonderful hiding place in all the world. She provided a magical whimsical escape from the world.

She knows and sees such intimate moments of a life. There, shining and majestic, very large and looming this particular year, as if a foreshadowing of a life-event which changes a family forever. The phone rang, I sat and stared at her green beauty and my tears puddled, my eyes blurred, I couldn’t see through the wet joy.

A baby had been born.

And he was coming into our family. A son, adopted. Lives changed forever. And the tree was up early that year. So a bassinet and a baby boy are rolled under her long limbs, evergreen protectors like a mother’s arms, for first pictures. A baby at home on December 2. Prayers answered. And the tree sees the lives transformed.

There were late sleepless nights when she was a cool calm friend. Walking the floors in the wee hours from worry or stress or menopause, and a lit tree calmed like a hot bath. The tree and I. And a quiet sleeping house.

Her fragrance, her evergreen beauty and regal stature whether she is grand or charliebrowntreeesque (this word is not in the Scrabble dictionary, but it needs to be) are barometers of family life. You can read down and up and out and back, as a record book of family details and milestones.

What would we do without her.

So I would offend her, as any mother would be, if I chose a favorite ornament. It would be almost like singling out a child from the nest as the favorite. Mom’s heart holds equal love for each one of her babies. But you can bet that more often than not, it’s the meek, the humble, the rudimentary that take up the most space in the heart.

The ornament that is made in love, with love, pointing to love , witnessing love, and marking love, through the years, through the Christmases.

And through the trees.

What new stories will she gather up with her branches and hold fast in her evergreen arms.

What love will she witness, what new life will she bury in the quiet recesses of her archives.

Ripe with living, ripe with love.

Green and growing, families through the years.

Joining Amber and a great group of writers at The Run A Muck for Amber’s concrete word prompts. Today it is Ornament.

And I am joining Laura for Playdates At The Wellspring.

I Know Now, A Little More About Writing And Living

November 23, 2012November 24, 2012 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 5 Comments

Fill your paper with the breathings of your heart — William Wordsworth

Writing is both mask and unveiling — E.B. White

Every day I learn a little more about writing and living and how they intertwine. Does living drive the writing. Doesn’t writing come from the living.

But writing feels like living a second time. It often feels like a second go around, a chance to grab a clearer understanding. To place the lens up again with the glass wiped clean. Out from the fog comes the changed perspective. Ever so slightly, a changed experience evolves. Or the experience changes, is evolved when the breathing is released on the page.

And so I didn’t keep my promise, of sorts to you and to myself, that I was on a bit of a blogging break. Because in some ways I was still writing at the desk in the corner of my mind. Penning phrases and re-living the days of this life.

Processing the flood of strangers at our family Thanksgiving who turned out to be lovely and wonderful. Well I only spoke to one or two of them and they were perfectly lovely. I found myself too busy visiting with family that I see less often than I’d like. Do I feel a twinge of guilt for not mixing and mingling with them. Yes, how did you know.

And sitting in a small circle of family, from two to well, over fifty two, as a little one was cheered on to let her sister pull her tooth. The one in front in that Christmas song. The one that would make her smile all wonderful and toothless. The very tooth hanging by a thread, twisting and turning like a white sail flapping in the wind, nearly untethered.

So White was right. It’s an unveiling.

It’s a re-writing in the remembering. It’s life unveiled as the fingers dance out on the backlit keypads and reframe from memory the fragments of a life, played out again in recessed corners, deep crevices of wrinkling wobbling memory.

There are some seasons where slowing down the recording, the pulsing breathing, rebreathing of events seems to snuff the very life out of the living. To leave it in a dusty corner of the mind feels like an early burying of a life. An early death of sorts. This is that very season for me.

Because if White is right, then leaving the events veiled kills the potential for sharing the very heartbeat of the writer with her readers and her God.

If unveiling is sharing, these small seemingly wondrously mundane events where you may say I know, I have lived that, felt that, I am not so alone after all, then pull back the veil. To shared humanness.

We sat in the sunlit swamp with barely walkers and ones with walkers. And the stories of lives intersected like a pile up on 1-95. But rather than life-taking it is life-giving.

It is the aunt who retires in weeks after years of working and watching her face muse and ponder her plans.

It’s hearing of new jobs and hurt knees, new joints. Of aging and birth piled up like raked leaves, a collection of color and signs of changing seasons.

And it’s watching teenagers heave back in shared laughter at the giddy free falling joy of family who are more like friends and all their favorite foods, served outside by a blue river that most days is swampy muddy brown.

But today. Today it’s blue, the sky is blue, tummies and hearts are full. And the writers can’t stop reading the moments in reverse.

Retrieving yesterday’s moments which today are fresh memory. And while they are fresh, I will write with today’s breath yesterday’s breathing. Yesterdays living. Dip down into the inkwell of yesterdays still-wet stories, and stroke out understanding with an unveiling of the seemingly mundane moments.

And hope that our shared human experience gives legs to the stories and sets them out to run free.

And maybe we will all understand a little more about writing and living.

Rolling, Rolling, Rolling- A Reflective, Part 1

November 5, 2012November 6, 2012 ~ Elizabeth W. Marshall ~ 4 Comments

Life looks different in the looking back, from the reflective posture.

The way you look back over the simmering of the events, the narrative of days, unfolding, shades the past with different colors of a back traveling mind.

Changes.

The heart, the mind, the soul have time to envelope the days of the life in a love note.

Stamp it, seal it up.

Mail if off to the memory holder of the heart, to treasure forever.

This is the way of a life, and this is the way of this adventure.

The one in June. We boarded at the last minute, not the final minute, but late by standards of planners and plotters.

We packed our expectancy, excitement in bags, zipped up our longing for adventure in a sack of joy.

So in the marinating back over a journey of the heart and body, it takes time to sort it out.

We process, look back in love, look back in time, look back in longing.

And the wheels of the heart go rolling, rolling, rolling back over it all like a wooden pin on biscuit dough. Like the wheels on that bus we boarded in June, in Brooklyn.

We live life forward but we go diving for treasure in the past, sometimes, we do.

For a buried memory, a tucked away time and place, a once-in-a-lifetime adventure is not once after all, because of rolling back in memory.

We pick through the memories like birds at the feeder, knowing there is delicious nourishment in the mix, finding it, pulling it out and savoring it deep in the soul.

Tasting and seeing that He is good.

The eyes of the poet’s heart tread lightly through the story. Waits to tell when her heart feels it is just right.

Unveiling memories like red velvet curtain on the stage, the players, the memories must be ready to step out and step forth.

So it is with this.