July 12: "Beans," Virtue, Growing Pumpkins

Mary Oliver writes about the virtue of beans . . .

Beans

by:  Mary Oliver

They're not like peaches or squash.  Plumpness isn't for them.  They like being lean, as if for the narrow path.  The beans themselves sit quietly inside their green pods.  Instinctively one picks with care, never tearing down the fine vine, never not noticing their crisp bodies, or feeling their willingness for the pot, or the fire.

I have thought sometimes that something--I can't name it--watches as I walk the rows, accepting the gift of their lives to assist mine.

I know what your think:  this is foolishness.  They're only vegetables.  Even the blossoms with which they begin are small and pale, hardly significant.  Our hands or minds, our feet hold more intelligence.  With this I have no quarrel.

But, what about virtue?

The definition of "virtue" is "the quality of doing what is right and avoiding what is wrong."  I agree with Oliver that beans do not have intelligence.  They don't have to think about sprouting or taking root or blossoming.  These things are hardwired into their nature.  However, the question Oliver asks at the end of the poem is whether beans know the difference between doing good and doing bad.

Beans are willing to go to the cooking pot and fire.  They sacrifice themselves to plucking fingers.  Of course, beans don't have mouths to protest or feet to run away.  They just sit in the soil, offering up the gift of their lives to save Oliver's.

I am a person who has a hard time saying "no" to anything, but especially to people I love who are in need.  I'm not sure if that makes me as virtuous as beans.  Certainly, I know the difference between right and wrong.  Helping an injured bird--right.  Paying to see a movie based on QAnon conspiracy theories--bad.  Virtue is all about making the world a better place without harming anyone or anything.  

I've never had much of a green thumb.  One year, when both of my children were very young, I decided that I was going to grow pumpkins in my backyard.  I got some pumpkin sprouts from a good friend.  Went out and bought two, 50-pound bags of good, enriched soil.  Spread the dirt and planted the sprouts.  Then, I watered.  And watered.  And watered.  

To my surprise, the pumpkins grew and, after a couple weeks, blossomed with yellow flowers.  For my non-gardening disciples, I will explain that pumpkin flowers eventually mature into pumpkins.  I was doing something virtuous and amazing.  Instead of supporting commercial pumpkin farms where pesticides and unnatural growth enhancers destroy the environment, I was growing my pumpkins organically, without the use of harmful chemicals.

And then, rabbits began to appear at night and in the mornings to nibble away my pumpkin blossoms.  Not only that, but the tiny pumpkins that did manage to escape the jaws of rabbit death eventually rotted on their stems before they achieved any measurable size.

I waged war on those varmints (as Granny Clampett would have called them) all summer long.  Some nights, I just chased them away with noise and body movements.  Other times, I resorted to my garden hose, spraying the little bastards until they disappeared.  (They always came back.)  

After three months of tireless pumpkin duty, I had three pitiful pumpkins the size of avocados.  That's it.  Hundreds of dollars in water and soil.  Hours and hours of being Mr. McGregor to all the Peter Rabbits within five square miles of my home.  All I got from the experience was a certainty that I was a serial vegetable killer, plus a severe aversion to members of the Lepus family.  

I like to think I was being virtuous.  My kids loved watering those plants and chasing rabbits with me.  Plus, I was teaching them about being self-sustaining and living off the land.  In my mind, I was just one step away from being Pa Ingalls.

In the end, it wasn't a successful exercise in plant growth or virtue, unfortunately .  One night, about the beginning of October, I made a midnight trip to Walmart, bought three large pumpkins, went home, and put those pumpkins in my pumpkin patch out back.  When my daughter and son woke up the next morning, I told them that the pumpkin fairy had come under cover of darkness and transformed some of our blossoms into gigantic pumpkins.  My kids were thrilled.

By that point in the whole adventure, my virtue had taken a back seat to fatherly panic.  I didn't want my kids to think I was a loser.  So, I cheated a little, and it worked.

Am I proud of what I did?  Not really.  Did I ever try to grow pumpkins again.  Absolutely not.  But, for three months one summer, my kids learned about plant growth and soil and water and rabbits.  That's pretty cool.

Saint Marty, however, is the Ted Bundy of the vegetable kingdom.

June 18: Nikki Giovanni, "Dreams, " Fairy Godmother

Dreams 

by:  Nikki Giovanni

in my younger years

before i learned

black people aren’t

suppose to dream

i wanted to be

a raelet

and say “dr o wn d in my youn tears”

or “tal kin bout tal kin bout”

or marjorie hendricks and grind   

all up against the mic

and scream

“baaaaaby nightandday   

baaaaaby nightandday”

then as i grew and matured

i became more sensible   

and decided i would   

settle down

and just become

a sweet inspiration

_________________________

Been thinking a lot about dreams today.  How they can bolster hopes.  Make your life better.  Give you a reason to get out of bed in the morning.  They can also be destructive.  Make you miserable.  Focus on what you lack instead of what you have.

I would say that I'm a dreamer.  Always have been.  However, I'm realistic, as well.  I know that dreams aren't things that a Fairy Godmother gives you in a pumpkin patch.  Dreams come true through hard work.  Dedication.  And gratitude.  Lots of gratitude.

Saint Marty is grateful tonight for the life he's living right now and the people who make his dreams come true every day.

October 26: Poetic Halloween Inspiration, Paisley Rekdal, "Bats"

I know some of my disciples have missed my Poet of the Week feature, and I apologize for its absence.  I have no real excuse, unless laziness counts.  In truth, by the end of my days, I have found myself fairly exhausted, unable to formulate thought or wit into anything worth reading.

However, this week, I will try to provide a little poetic Halloween inspiration, starting with the poem below.  The Great Pumpkin arrives in a little less than a week.  There are pumpkins to carve, scary movies to watch, and candy to consume.  Perhaps a ghost or two will show up.  Maybe a zombie Bob Dylan.

Join Saint Marty and Linus in the pumpkin patch.

Bats

by:  Paisley Rekdal

unveil themselves in dark.
They hang, each a jagged,

silken sleeve, from moonlit rafters bright
as polished knives.  They swim


the muddled air and keen
like supersonic babies, the sound


we imagine empty wombs might make
in women who can't fill them up.

A clasp, a scratch, a sigh.
They drink fruit dry.

And wheel, against feverish light flung hard
upon their faces,

in circles that nauseate.
Imagine one at breast or neck,

patterning a name in driblets of iodine
that spatter your skin stars.

They flutter, shake like mystics.
They materialize.  Revelatory

as a stranger's underthings found tossed
upon the marital bed, you tremble

even at the thought.  Asleep,
you tear your fingers 

and search the sheets all night.

 
Boo!

April 28: Lawns, Molly Peacock, "Cutting Tall Grass"

I dislike my lawn.  If I could afford to cement my front and back yards and paint them green, I would.  That way, all I would have to do to clean my lawn is drag out the hose and wash it down.  I do nothing to cultivate lush grass.  Yet, for some reason, my lawn always seems to thrive.  And it pisses me off.

I have killed much vegetation in my life.  The pumpkin patch I planted one year yielded only one, cherry-tomato-sized squash.  Last summer, I over-watered several ferns at my friend's house and turned them into tumbleweeds.  Easter lilies might as well stay in the tomb under my watch, and poinsettias never see Santa Claus.

No part of Saint Marty's anatomy is green.

Cutting Tall Grass

by:  Molly Peacock

I love the sound of lawnmowers each year.
There's a woman in her workpants smelling of
gasoline and cut grass, wiping a smear
of grease on her head while blotting a swelling of
sweat from her head under her plastic visor.
I'm not sure whether she loves that machine.
Short grass is none the wiser for the razor,
so the love of mowing it is love of sheen.
But one must love the vehicle, the sun,
the bugs thrown up behind and the swallows
snatching bugs at the wheels to love a lawn,
the old grass spewn in the bleak shadows,
the new grass smelling of wet and slight rot,
to love to live between what is and is not.

My idea of a healthy lawn

October 25: Squashes and Pumpkins, Carving, Robert Frost, "Gathering Leaves," New Cartoon

The autumn days grew shorter, Lurvy brought the squashes and pumpkins in from the garden and piled them on the barn floor, where they wouldn't get nipped on frosty nights...

Autumn days.  Frosty nights.  Squashes and pumpkins.  E. B. White moves easily from the dog days of summer to the golden afternoons of fall to the frozen nights of winter.  Of course, by the end of the book, Wilbur's life is secure, and he can experience the changing seasons without any fear of a visit to the smokehouse.  Wilbur's future is full of jack-o-lanterns and cornstalks, wreaths and holly.

Today was one of those squash and pumpkin October days.  Warm and windy.  The trees were thrashing, and the leaves were flying.  I've never really raked the leaves at my house.  They sit on my lawn until the snow comes, and then they spend the winter composting.  In the spring, the grass comes up, green and rich.  I've seen my neighbors bagging their leaves, scooping them into the back of pickup trucks.  Of course, their lawns look fantastic when they're done, but, in a few weeks, snow will be the great equalizer.  Their lawns and my lawn--everything--will be white.

My daughter and I went to a local pumpkin patch to do some shopping.  She picked out two, huge specimens, and I spent a good portion of the afternoon scooping pumpkin innards and carving faces.  My son chose a one-eyed monster for his jack-o-lantern.  My daughter, a skeletal design.  I managed to sculpt both pumpkins without injuring myself.  That's quite an accomplishment for a person who once ended up in the ER on Christmas day for stabbing himself in the wrist attempting to open a toy for his daughter.

Robert Frost has a great little poem about October days like this.  I have a feeling he would have been one of those neighbors who raked and bagged this time of year.  He probably would have grown pumpkins in his backyard, too.  Large and orange.  Enough to supply the whole street with jack-o-lanterns.

Saint Marty prefers to get his pumpkins the old-fashioned way:  from Walmart.

Gathering Leaves

by:  Robert Frost

Spades take up leaves
No better than spoons,
And bags full of leaves
Are light as balloons.

I make a great noise
Of rustling all day
Like rabbit and deer
Running away.

But the mountains I raise
Elude my embrace,
Flowing over my arms
And into my face.

I may load and unload
Again and again
Till I fill the whole shed,
And what have I then?

Next to nothing for weight,
And since they grew duller
From contact with earth,
Next to nothing for color.

Next to nothing for use.
But a crop is a crop,
And who's to say where
The harvest shall stop? 

 Confessions of Saint Marty