August 20: "Toad," Bayou Art Walk, Vision of Reality

Mary Oliver has a conversation with a . . .

Toad

by:  Mary Oliver

I was walking by.  He was sitting there.

It was full morning, so the heat was heavy on his sand-colored head and his webbed feet.  I squatted beside him, at the edge of the path.  He didn't move,

I began to talk.  I talked about summer, and about time.  The pleasures of eating, the terrors of the night.  About this cup we call a life.  About happiness.  And how good it feels, the heat of the sun between the shoulder blades.

He looked neither up nor down, which didn't necessarily mean he was either afraid or asleep.  I felt his energy, stored under his tongue perhaps, and behind his bulging eyes.

I talked about how the world seems to me, five feet tall, the blue sky all around my head.  I said, I wondered how it seemed to him, down there, intimate with the dust.

He might have been Buddha--did not move, blink, or frown, not a tear fell from those gold-rimmed eyes as the refined anguish of language passed over him,

Oliver meets a toad as she's walking, and she does what Oliver always does:  stops and pays attention.  She talks to the toad about what is on her mind--food, summer, sun between her shoulder blades, the refined anguish of language.  I love the adjective "refined" in this poem, because it hints at something that has been distilled, purified, broken down into its main elements.  Oliver's words are a buffer between experience and understanding.  She uses language to create meaning, but, of course, that language barely comes close to the truth.

That's what all poets do, really.  We use the tools of poetry (imagery, rhythm, music, rhyme, metaphor, simile) to try to talk about how the world seems to us.  To communicate our vision (version?) of reality.  We TRY, but, most of the time, we fail.  Because it's like trying to explain grief or love to a toad, who has not need for either of those emotions.

I spent this afternoon sitting in the middle of a bayou, giving away free poetry.  It was part of an annual Bayou Art Walk sponsored by the Upper Peninsula Land Conservancy.  As people passed by, I called to them like a carnival barker on the midway, tempting them with promises of a free postcard poem, plus and chance to roll the dice and win a poetry broadside poster.  And people stopped.  They read haiku and played the game.

I talked to strangers and friends, petted passing dogs, got individuals who probably hadn't touched poetry since high school to read a poem aloud to the cedars and ferns and birds.  I didn't see any toads on the path, but I did spy a couple squirrels and a dragonfly or two.  

This is my vision/version of reality today.  Sun and wind and trees and poetry and art, all in one place.  People going out of their ways, tramping along a path through a bayou, to find beauty and meaning.  Me, sitting in the pines, sharing with a poet friend the refined anguish of language.

Saint Marty didn't have a Mary moment today.  He had a Mary afternoon. 

August 13: "In Pobiddy, Georgia," Bayou, Lon

Mary Oliver visits a cemetery . . .

In Pobiddy, Georgia

by:  Mary Oliver

Three women

climb from the car

in which they have driven slowly

into the churchyard.

They come toward us, to see

what we are doing.

What we are doing

is reading the strange,

wonderful names

of the dead.

One of the women

speaks to us--

after we speak to her.

She walks with us and shows us,

with a downward-thrust finger,

which of the dead

were her people.

She tell us

about two brothers, and an argument,

and a gun--she points

to one of the slabs

on which there is a name,

some scripture, a handful of red

plastic flowers.  We ask her

about the other brother.

"Chain gang," she says,

as you or I might say

"Des Moines," or "New Haven."  And then,

"Look around all you want."

The younger woman stands back, in the stiff weeds,

like a banked fire.

The third one--

the oldest human being we have ever seen in our lives--

suddenly drops to the dirt

and begins to cry.  Clearly

she is blind, and clearly

she can't rise, but they lift her, like a child,

and lead her away, across the graves, as though,

as old as anything could ever be, she was, finally,

perfectly finished, perfectly heartbroken, perfectly wild.

One of my favorite things to do in new places is visit local cemeteries, as Oliver does.  In this poem, she says she does it to marvel at the strange and wonderful names on the stones.  I do it to get a feel for the history of a place.  For example, in the town where I live, you can wander through the older sections of the local graveyard and, by paying attention to the dates, figure out when the 1918 flu epidemic hit the area.  It doesn't take Sherlock Holmes to figure it out.  An entire section of graves contains dozens of headstones for children who succumbed to that pandemic.  (I'm sure, 100 years from now, someone will be doing the same thing for the COVID-19 pandemic.  We will become tragic history.)

I even watch YouTube videos of cemetery tours.  The ones I find most fascinating are visits to the graves of famous people.  Singers.  Actors.  Musicians.  Presidents.  Historical figures.  Just a couple days ago, I saw a video in which the host of the show discovered the urn of Edmund Gwenn in a vault of unclaimed cremains.  (Gwenn won an Oscar for playing Kris Kringle in the original Miracle on 34th Street.)  For 60 years, nobody knew for sure where his ashes were.  And there the host stood in front of the camera, holding the urn of Santa Claus.

Yes, I know this past time is a little on the creepy side.  But, for a few moments, when Oliver is reading the names on the gravestones in Pobiddy, Georgia, or when that YouTube host is holding that urn, the dead are remembered.  Their names are given breath, and they are resurrected for a short while.  I think that is a great gift.  A Mary moment.

I went to visit a nature preserve today.  A bayou that is taken care of by the Upper Peninsula Land Conservancy.  It was a beautiful day, full of sunshine and a cool breeze.  As I strolled along the paths and across the bridges constructed by the UPLC, I found myself thinking of a wonderful man whom I had the privilege of calling a friend.  His name was Lon.

Lon was a writer and teacher and saunterer and environmentalist.  He had a wicked sense of humor and a love for almost all human and animal kind (excluding Donald Trump and his red-hatted army of willful ignoramuses).  I've never known anyone who relished life more than Lon.  Every once in a while, when I was working at an outpatient surgery center, Lon would phone, to check on me and tell me a joke.  On special occasions, he would show up with a cheesecake and more jokes.  Lon's smile and laugh were the Eighth and Ninth Wonders of the World.

Lon and his beautiful wife, Lynn, were huge supporters of the work of the UPLC and the preservation of the bayou.  As I sauntered down the trails, watched the sunlight in the trees, listened to the birds, I thought of Lon.  Felt him walking beside me.  He was there.  And I spoke his name aloud.  Gave him breath.  

When I got back to my car, I checked my cell phone.  Out of the blue, there was a message from Lon's wife.  Lynn was reaching out to tell me how much she was enjoying my work for the library, all the programs I offer.  She added at the end of her message, "Your friend Lon would, too!"

Lon was working his Lon magic today.  Filling the world with laughter and beauty and love.

It was a gift for Saint Marty.

A picture from the bayou . . .