Friday Haikus

gray morning blanket
frayed with scuttering sunlight -
throw back the nighttime!


________________


pink window tulips
push icy winter shivers
into springtime dreams.



___________________


bluebird on feeder
midst January doldrum -
happiness on tap!

Blame

Oops,
A mistake.

What to do.

Mine,
Your's,
Ours.

But
that's
the order
of
healing.

In Person

I have one person with whom I still write letters. One.

If you're a saver like me, you probably have boxes of letters from the past. Or, if you're like me, a whittled-down, rubber-banded pack in your desk drawer. They seemed important to keep.

When last have you gotten a letter through the mail? When one arrives through our slot, I am absolutely thrilled. Someone has taken the time to find a blank sheet of paper, a pen that works, a stamp from the depths of a drawer somewhere, an address book, and the time to sit at the kitchen table, a desk, an easy chair, and write their thoughts of you, to you.

Exquisite. 

While I'm not decrying email, texting, whatever, I'm ready to marvel at the amazing procedure I described above because of how much time and effort it requires.

When we taught school in Newfoundland, I, of course wrote home volumes to my parents, trying to bridge the enormous gap between Carmanville and Hinkletown. The miracle wasn't that I wrote; it was that Mother kept those letters and returned them to me years later. They are now in a notebook, all different size paper, red-blue-black inks, smudges - but they are gloriously real. The experiences that I may question in my heart,  there they are on paper - the highs, the lows, the delights, the sorrows - all there.

Yes, we can record all of those things electronically today. But isn't there an enormous differences in the life that breaths through those hand-written documents? When my friend writes in her awkward lefty script, I see braids, freckles, laughter, skinned knees - the person. When I read a typed page I get the message, not the essence.

I mourn.

Bread

Today I made bread. As I smelled the first wafts of baking yeast, I remembered this poem I wrote about Newfoundland ages ago -


In this land of rocky coasts
and ill-traveled roads,
when you meet a stranger
on the highroad,
you invite him home
for a 'drop of tea.'

Strong tea in fragile cups,
served up with bread -
shining loaves,
coarse and nourishing
as the salt air.

Bread that rises by the kitchen stove,
clicking white dough
shaped by weathered fingers
with ancient assurance,
baked by the heat
of dawn-frosted logs,
to a golden crust
hollow to the tap,
spread scarlet with marsh berries.

Bread warm
against the sea
and wind
and being alone.

Ornamental Pleasure

Taking down the Christmas tree ornaments, it suddenly occurred to me that they were like little histories  And quite true to life, I can't remember where some of them came from! But most of them have a unique memory attached to them.

The most precious one is Perky Penguin - a gift from JD when he was four. We had just moved to Reston and he wanted to buy me a gift. The little ornament took all his money and he came in tears to me that he didn't have enough to buy Dad one too! Perky occupies a big heart space each year.

But others come from extended family, colleagues, neighbors, friends, school days... and each one brings a flood of thoughts.

Perhaps that is really the best of Christmas. Not all the chaos of shopping, baking, decorating, parties, presents - but that quiet moment of remembering life on little metal hooks.

January 1

Mrs. Miller would walk to the tall, free-standing cupboard at the back of the room, unlock the doors and hand us fresh tablets of lined paper and new yellow Ticonderoga pencils. The school year had begun!

I feel like that today. I have been given a new year and I must certainly sharpen my pencil and begin.

One of the morning show people said - "choose one word to focus on for the year.' Instantly w-r-i-t-e flashed into my mind.

I'm way overdue.

*****


A bluebird
landed on
the feeder.

A yes
landed
on my heart.