July 30: My Daughter and Church, Camille T. Dungy, "Frequently Asked Questions: #9"

It is Saturday.  Around 4 p.m., I will go into my daughter's room and tell her that it's time to go to church.  We have been doing this every Saturday for her entire life.  I play the pipe organ, so she has been in church since before she could walk.  I remember her sitting in her carrier as an infant, sucking on her pacifier, sleeping as the huge pipes above her bellowed out "How Great Thou Art."  So the announcement that it's time to leave for church should come as no surprise.

Yet, recently, every time I alert her to our impending departure for church, my daughter flops backward on her bed as if I've just told her that Instagram or Snapchat has been outlawed.  She stomps and sulks.  Rarely does she argue, because she knows she stands no chance of winning the dispute.  But she makes her displeasure very evident.

I miss the days when I could make her happy with a pacifier or clean diaper, when she sat in church and looked around like she could see choirs of angels floating above her.  I know my daughter's main problem at the moment is that she's a teenager.  Awkward and difficult years.  The future scary.  I try to keep that in mind when she's rolling her eyes or saying to me, "Okay, okay, okay, OKAY, I know, I know, I KNOW!!!!"

Saint Marty loves his daughter.  He simply wishes that walking into her room wasn't like approaching a sleeping alligator sometimes.

Frequently Asked Questions:  #9

by:  Camille T. Dungy

Don't you think you should have another child?


This girl I have is hardtack and dried lime
and reminds me, every groggy morning,
what a miracle it must have been
when outfitters learned to stock ship holds
with that one long lasting fruit. How the sailors' tongues,
landing on its bitter brilliance, must have cursed
the curse of joy, as I did that morning the burst
of water brought my sweet girl into our lives.

But, already, she hates me sometimes.
Like I have sometimes hated my mother and she
must have sometimes hated her own.

After weeks at sea, the limes would desiccate and the meal
fill with worms. They would have eaten
anyway, the sailors, but taken no pleasure from anything.
Or taken no pleasure from anything but
the fact of their sustained lives. Which is to say it is all
I can do, most days, not to swallow
her up and curse her maker, I swear. Like I have not
sworn since the morning she was born.

July 28: Only the Good, Camille T. Dungy, "Association Copy"

Tonight's poem by the Poet of the Week is about a person who died at the age of 40--poet Lynda Hull.  After publishing two books, Hull was killed in a car accident in 1994.  Her voice was amazing, and it was silenced way too soon.

In the poem, Dungy writes about finding a book of poems by Phil Levine that has Hull's signature in it.  It probably was from Hull's personal library, sold in the aftermath of tragic passing.  It's difficult giving up a loved one's belongings.  It's sort of like losing the person all over again.

I still have small pieces of junk that my sister gave me squirreled away in dresser drawers and between pages of books.  Yesterday, at work, I came across a note she'd written.  There they were, her unmistakable fat letters.  For a moment, it was like hearing her voice again.  My family still has a whole closet full of her belongings (and that's just the tip of the proverbial iceberg).  Letting go is shitty, hard work.

I'm glad I found this poem.  It made me happy.  I don't know why.  It just did.  Perhaps it reminded me of the discovery of my sister's little note yesterday.  That note was a gift.  She's still with me, watching.  Somehow.  Somewhere.

Saint Marty agrees with Billy Joel.  Only the good die young.

Association Copy

by:  Camille T. Dungy

Lynda Hull

Maybe you sold it to buy junk. Though I like to think not.

And I don't want to think you used the money for food

or rent or anything obligatory, practical.

A pair of boots, perhaps. Thigh high burgandy boots

with gold laces. Something crucial as lilies.

Mostly, I want to believe you held onto the book,

that your fingers brailed those pages' inky veins

even in your final weeks. I want to believe

words can be that important in the end.

Who can help the heart, which is grand and full

of gestures? I had been on my way out.

He was rearranging his bookshelves

when, in an approximation of tenderness, 

he handed me, like the last of the sweet potatoes

at Thanksgiving, like a thing he wanted

but was willing to share, the rediscovered book—

he'd bought it years ago in a used bookstore

in Chicago. Levine's poems, with your signature inside.

That whole year I spent loving him, something splendid

as lemons, sour and bright and leading my tongue

toward new language, was on the shelf. These

weren't your own poems, autographed, a stranger's

souvenir—we'd spent vain months leafing through

New York stacks for your out-of-print collections—but you'd cared

about this book, or cared enough to claim it, your name

looped across the title page as if to say, Please.

This is mine, This book is mine. Though you sold it.

Or someone else did when you died.

We make habits out of words. I grew accustomed

to his, the way they spooned me into sleep

so many times. Now I am sleepless and alone

another night. What would you give for one more night

alone? No booze. No drugs. Just that hunger

and those words. He gave me The Names of the Lost.

Need comes down hard on a body. What else

was sold? What else—do you know?—did we lose

Lynda Hull

July 27: Goodness and Decency, Camille T. Dungy, "Ark"

I'm currently watching President Obama address the Democratic National Convention.

Let me come clean:  I voted for the man.  Twice.  I would vote for him again, if I could.  He's talking about hope and optimism right now.  I remember the night he first won the Presidency of the United States.  I watched him address a huge crowd of people.  I saw a news anchor, a man of color, hold back tears as he talked about the legacy of Martin Luther King, Jr.

Hope and optimism are not normal states for me, if you haven't noticed.  I can wallow and embrace darkness.  (I'm a poet.  It comes with the territory.)  Tonight, however, I'm not feeling pessimistic.  I'm feeling proud of a country led by a good, decent man.  I'm feeling optimistic that goodness and decency will continue to be a guiding light for the American people.  Darkness and pessimism will fail.

That's Saint Marty's belief.  His faith.

Ark

by:  Camille T. Dungy

I will enter you as hope enters me,

through blinding liquid, light of rain, and I

will stay inside until you send me out;

I will stay inside until you ground me.

We cannot outrun the rain. So many

summers I have tried. So many summers.

But when the rumble calls after the spark

there can be no escape. No outstripping

the drench soak, the wet sheath, the water caul.

This is more than you want to hear. Much more

than I want to tell you. Tabernacle

transporting my life from the desert, you,

the faith I am born and reborn into,

you, rescuer, deliverer of rain.

July 26: Miracles, Camille T. Dungy, "Requiem"

As I approach the anniversary of my sister's death, I sometimes find it difficult to be positive.  I have been trying to focus on joy and happiness, to greater and lesser success at times.  In my previous post tonight, I talked about miracles.

My sister was a miracle.  One of the smartest people I have ever known.  Generous--she bought me a new car when I graduated from my Master's degree program.  Drove me down to Kalamazoo when I started in a PhD program, hauling a trailer full of my crap.  She supported me in everything that I ever did.

I know she wasn't perfect.  She knew I wasn't perfect.  Yet, we accepted each other's failings.  A couple years ago, as we were sitting in her office at the end of a long work day, she told me that she admired my strength in dark times.  My sister wasn't a warm, fuzzy person.  Didn't hug much.  But she cared deeply, loved deeply.

Saint Marty believes in miracles.

Requiem

by:  Camille T. Dungy

Sing the mass—
light upon me washing words
now that I am gone. 

The sky was a hot, blue sheet the summer breeze fanned

out and over the town. I could have lived forever

under that sky. Forgetting where I was,

I looked left, not right, crossed into a street

and stepped in front of the bus that ended me.

Will you believe me when I tell you it was beautiful—

my left leg turned to uselessness and my right shoe flung

some distance down the road? Will you believe me

when I tell you I had never been so in love

with anyone as I was, then, with everyone I saw?

The way an age-worn man held his wife’s shaking arm,

supporting the weight that seemed to sing from the heart

she clutched. Knowing her eyes embraced the pile

that was me, he guided her sacked body through the crowd.

And the way one woman began a fast the moment she looked

under the wheel. I saw her swear off decadence.

I saw her start to pray. You see, I was so beautiful

the woman sent to clean the street used words

like police tape to keep back a young boy

seconds before he rounded the grisly bumper.

The woman who cordoned the area feared my memory

would fly him through the world on pinions of passion

much as, later, the sight of my awful beauty pulled her down

to tears when she pooled my blood with water

and swiftly, swiftly washed my stains away.

July 25: Dreams, Poet of the Week, Camille T. Dungy, "Pity"

Camille T. Dungy is the Poet of the Week.  I'm not really familiar with her work, but I came across her poem "Pity," and, for obvious reasons, it appealed to me quite a bit.

It's about Christ and suffering.  It's about a woman and mother.  It's about not losing yourself or your dreams, or perhaps allowing your dreams to evolve.  I'm not quite sure.  However, I know how family changes your values.

Over twenty years ago, I was all about writing and publishing and teaching.  Then I got married.  Then I had a daughter.  Eight years later, a son.  I'm not going to lie, though.  Sometimes, late at night when I'm lying in bed, thinking about my life, I still think about being a full-time writer and teacher.  How my life hasn't turned out exactly the way I planned.

But, sometimes God has other plans.  Better plans.

Saint Marty is just here to play his part.

Pity

by:  Camille T. Dungy

Christ bore what suffering he could and died

a young man, but you waited years to learn

how to heal. Only when you could did you

touch the man whose body blistered for yours.

You posted him no news for sixteen terms,

then just a signed graduation notice.

The letter he wrote that week asked only,

Now that your books are closed, can boys come in?

At your wedding, you buried the woman

you thought you knew inside a stranger’s name.

This is how you found yourself: thirty-three,

nursing a son. Soon there was another.

Your mind had already begun to walk.

But you were a mother. Those cribs held you.