Work or Play?

As you study this series of photos it is hard to tell if watching the birds is real work or play. Again, we are thankful the bird feeder is so high. Thanks McDuff, Grayson, and Junebug.

Sunshine Mine Fire: Looking Back Forty Years Later

Could it really have been forty years ago that we arrived back in Kellogg from a track meet to have the principal of the school meet our bus and tell us of the tragic fire at Sunshine Mine?

I was a junior in high school as the nursing home across the street became a makeshift morgue. Could I really understand at that time what it meant to lose 91 lives?

As I reflected on the event today did I realize it would be as fresh a memory today? When I talked about it today at school it seemed like yesterday.

Did I ever think about how much this effected so many families in the Silver Valley of north Idaho that day? I think it was too huge for me to comprehend. 

Did I say prayers today for the families of those lost miners? Yes.

I took the picture above at the Sunshine Mine Memorial at Big Creek Idaho by Kellogg.

Click here for a recent NPR feature on the disaster.

Merry Month of May

The theme of May NaBloPo Mo is Play. My goal is to post each day in May. Let's see how it goes.

 

Today I played with my camera in the greenhouse. Longer days and the moisture in the air had encouraged new growth and beautiful blooms on the geraniums that we wintered over. Everett says it is all about "the watering". Guess who does the watering? 

 

"I was strolling through the greenhouse one day....in the merry,merry month of May...."

Choosing a Favorite Poem

 

I don't know if I could ever choose my favorite poem of all time. There are too many. Some poems were my favorites duriing childhood like " Land of Counterpane", and "Little Orphan Annie". Why? I remember my mother reading them to me.  When I drew an illustration in sixth grade to go with "Barefoot Boy" I knew that poem would always stay with me. I still have the colored drawing and the poem copied in my neat cursive. How could I forget it?

I went through my Rod McKuen phase. I learned much from Poe. I discovered Judith Viorst's witty adult poems while finding poems students might like. I memorized "Oh Captain, My Captain." I collected humorous poems to entertain my students. I grew to appreciate cowboy poetry. I will always love Jane Kenyon and Mary Oliver.

When I reflect on poems that I return to often, "Kindness" is one of them. I had the privledge of hearing Naomi Shihab Nye read poetry in person as she paid tribute to another of my favorite poets, William Stafford at an English teacher conference shortly after his death.

I always searched out Nye's poems after that. My brother also chose this poem for one of our blog Sibling Assignments a few years ago. You can find his comments on the poem here.  I don't think this poem really found me until I experienced much loss in my life.  He reminded me that loss can be a good thing.

Now please share with me, what is your favorite poem and why?

Kindness

Before you know what kindness really is 
you must lose things, 
feel the future dissolve in a moment 
like salt in a weakened broth. 
What you held in your hand, 
what you counted and carefully saved, 
all this must go so you know 
how desolate the landscape can be 
between the regions of kindness. 
How you ride and ride 
thinking the bus will never stop, 
the passengers eating maize and chicken 
will stare out the window forever.

Before you learn the tender gravity of kindness, 
you must travel where the Indian in a white poncho 
lies dead by the side of the road. 
You must see how this could be you, 
how he too was someone 
who journeyed through the night with plans 
and the simple breath that kept him alive. 

Before you know kindness as the deepest thing inside, 
you must know sorrow as the other deepest thing. 
You must wake up with sorrow. 
You must speak to it till your voice 
catches the thread of all sorrows 
and you see the size of the cloth.

Then it is only kindness that makes sense anymore, 
only kindness that ties your shoes 
and sends you out into the day to mail letters and purchase bread, 
only kindness that raises its head 
from the crowd of the world to say 
It is I you have been looking for, 
and then goes with you everywhere 
like a shadow or a friend. 
—Naomi Shihab Nye

 

Woman Who Loves Gardening

 

Another of my original poems to bring National Poetry Month to a close.

 

Woman Who Loves Gardening

I have dirty nails

and rarely paint them, living out

my long growing season in the flower garden, trellises

giving view to clematis, climbing Peace

where aromatic flowers

grow in profusion.

I pull the weeds

in the early morning

gritting my teeth

wiping sweat from my brow

and listening

to footsteps of my husband

coming in range to help.

Sun makes my face red;

each sniff with my nose

leaves lily pollen behind.

When I rest it’s the beauty

that causes anxiety to shake loose

from a woman in need

of a quiet place to retreat.

 

Christy Woolum

This poem was inspired by Women Who Love Angels by Judith Ortiz Cofer

Digging For Keys

As National Poetry Month comes to an end I am going to repost some of my own original poems. This poem was inspired by an exercise at a writing retreat about those things we lose.

Digging for Keys

Faded cottage cheese tubs stuffed with rusty nails,

hooks on the wall overflowing with coats;

a ripped poncho, a manure covered barn coat, a too-small ski parka.

Hanging close are the hats;

hunting orange, hand-me-down tan, John Deere green,

The stained lavender lamp shade lingers in the corner.

 

Resting on the steps, plastic plant pots, trays, and saucers to catch the drips;

a leaky watering can, one silver slipper,  a dead lily discarded after Easter.

nozzles, washers, sprinklers for hoses;

five Mason jars, three canning rings, a Crockpot without a lid.

 

The drawer holds keys to doors that never open, cords to gadgets long thrown away;

Fasteners with a purpose fading from memory and doodads once with a use,

two knights from a chess set, wooden Scrabble tile, one toothpick,

pastel birthday candles, an outdated candy thermometer

resting before the next celebration.

 

Things of life are saved, arranged, hung, and displayed.

They join soft levis molded to our shape;

colored Avon bottles Aunt Pearl wrote into her will;

 birdfeeder presented as a wedding gift;

leaning mailbox with the chipped red flag.

 

Things remind us of everyday life;

 nails to repair the fence, crockpot Sunday soup,

batch of applesauce put up last fall, a marathon Scrabble game.

Digging for a key that frosty, winter night

Doors and windows were locked up tight.

 

Christy Woolum