Lilac Time

We arrived home too late last night to do a garden tour. This morning I was so excited to see the lilacs opening up and beginning to fill the air with their fragrance.  Lilacs were always a part of springtime growing up in the Inland Empire.

Spokane, known as the Lilac City, always celebrates the blooming of lilacs with the festival in May. In a town that usually smelled like smelter smoke, lilacs managed to endure and make a beautiful border in our backyard on Cameron Ave.

Evening Sky Shots: Northeastern Washington Highway

National Poetry Month Coming to an End: Canning Time

It is hard to believe April will soon be leaving us. I carved time out all month to read new, old, favorite, and classic poems. I have had the poster you see on the sidebar on my whiteboard of the classroom all month. A student just yesterday said, "How long has that poster been there?"  I do love to celebrate National Poetry Month even if a few students don't notice!  I will continue to celebrate my love for poetry many more times on this blog. I am returning to one of my favorite anthologies with my poem today. The book is Strings: A Gathering of Family Poems, selected by Paul Janeczko. This poem reminds me of Grandma West, Grandma Woolum, Auntie Lila, Auntie Ronnie, Aunt May, cousin Helen, my mom, myself, JEJ, and my sister Silver Valley Girl... all the great canners in the family!

Canning Time

The floor was muddy with the juice of peaches
and my mother's thumb, bandaged for the slicing,
watersobbed. She and Aunt Wessie skinned
bushels that day, fat Georgia Belles
slit streaming into the pot. Their knives
paid out limp bands onto the heap
of parings. It took care to pack the jars,
reaching in to stack the halves
firm without bruising, and lowering
the heavy racks into the boiler already
trembling with steam, the stove malignant
in heat. As Wessie wiped her face
the kitchen sweated its sweet filth.
In that hell they sealed the quickly browning
flesh in capsules of honey, making crystals
of separate air across the vacuums.
The heat and pressure were enough to grow
diamonds as they measured hot
syrup into quarts. By supper the last jar
was set on the counter to cool
into isolation. Later in the night
each little urn would pop as it
achieved its private atmosphere and
we cooled into sleep, the stove now
neutral. The stones already
pecked clean in the yard were free to try
again for the sun. The orchard meat fixed in
cells would be taken down cellar in the
morning to stay gold like specimens
set out and labeled, a vegetal
battery we'd hook up later. The women
too tired to rest easily think of
the treasure they've laid up today
for preservation at coffin level, down there
where moth and rust and worms corrupt,
a first foundation of shells to be
fired at the winter's muddy back.
-Robert Morgan

What the Living Do

I remember attending a workshop about five years ago and the presenter had us do an activity with this poem. I had never heard the poem and really loved reading it that day and still have the coffee stained copy that I have kept since that day. I still really like it.  ( Everything I love seems to have coffee stains on it!)  I think each of us could create our own poem with this title.

 What the Living Do

Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days, some utensil probably
    fell down there.
And the Drano won’t work but smells dangerous, and the crusty dishes
    have piled up

waiting for the plumber I still haven’t called. This is the everyday we
    spoke of.
It’s winter again: the sky’s a deep headstrong blue, and the sunlight
    pours through

the open living room windows because the heat’s on too high in here, and
    I can’t turn it off.
For weeks now, driving, or dropping a bag of groceries in the street,
    the bag breaking,

I’ve been thinking: This is what the living do. And yesterday, hurrying
    along those
wobbly bricks in the Cambridge sidewalk, spilling my coffee down my
    wrist and sleeve,

I thought it again, and again later, when buying a hairbrush: This is it.
Parking. Slamming the car door shut in the cold. What you called     that yearning.

What you finally gave up. We want the spring to come and the winter to
    pass. We want
whoever to call or not call, a letter, a kiss – we want more and more and
    then more of it.

But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the
    window glass,
say, the window of the corner video store, and I’m gripped by a cherishing
    so deep

for my own blowing hair, chapped face, and unbuttoned coat that I’m
    speechless:

I am living, I remember you.

Marie Howe, from her 1998 collection What the Living Do

April is National Poetry Month: Great Poems by American Women

A favorite anthology I chose today is Great Poems by American Women edited by Susan L. Rattiner. One thing I love about this anthology is how it spans the time from the colonial-era to now so the reader gets a history of subjects and themes from American women poets.

Today I am going to share the following:

God's World
by Edna St. Vincent Millay

O world, I cannot hold thee close enough!
   Thy winds, thy wide grey skies!
   Thy mists, that roll and rise!
Thy woods, this autumn day, that ache and sag
And all but cry with colour! That gaunt crag
To cruch! To lift the lean of that black bluff!
World, world, I cannot get the close enough!
Long have I known a glory in it an,
   But never knew I this;

  Here such a passion is
As stretcheth me apart,-Lord, I do fear
Thou'st made the world too beautiful this year;
My soul is all but out of me,-let fall
No burning leaf; prithee, let no bird call.

Sibling Assignment #130: April

Silver Valley Girl gave us the last assignment relating to the theme of April. "The name April is very common for girls born in this month.  Write about a person you know whose name is April, and what impact they have made on your life."  

This is my friend April. I love the pensive look on her face in this photo. This was taken last September as we enjoyed an amazing Peruvian feast with friends in Moscow. 

April came into my life through the Northwest Inland Writing Project.  We met at a leadership retreat, wrote together at a writing retreat, have kept in contact via email and our blogs, and continued to work together with NIWP. Last summer I had the privilege of co-faciliating the Summer Institute with April. We have stayed up way too late and had meaningful discussions about life, solved all the problems of the world, and shared good food, coffee, and laughs. I learned by being friends with April that you don't have to be close in age, work in the same school, go on shopping trips together, or text each other ten times a day to have a close friendship. Our friendship is built on muture respect, our passion for teaching and learning, love of books, writing, and poetry, NIWP, similar values, and an appreciation of simple things in life. I always look forward to the time we do spend together because we can always pick up where we left off last time.  I feel blessed that our paths crossed in this crazy world of ours and we were able to built this special friendship. Thanks April for being my friend. You have helped me realize I can enjoy the genre of fantasy, an effective leader can be gentle and nurturing, and  Patti's Kitchen is by far the best place to grade papers at the end of SI!