An annoying – though thankfully non-destructive – virus decided that my computer would make a good temporary host, delaying the March Poem of the Month.

The confluence of the virus with Spring Break didn’t speed up the healing, but thankfully the patient has now made a full recovery. With the remnants of Spring Break still lingering in the air for many of us, I thought it was an appropriate time for a poem about travel…and birds.

Happy Spring everyone!

Stewart

Timothy Steele
(1948 -   )

In the Memphis Airport

Above the concourse, from a beam,
A little warbler pours forth song.
Beneath her, hurried humans stream:
Some draw wheeled suitcases along
Or from a beeping belt or purse
Apply a cell phone to an ear;
Some pause at banks of monitors
Where times and gates for flights appear.

Although by nature flight-endowed,
She seems too gentle to reproach
These souls who soon will climb through cloud
In first class, business class, and coach.
She may feel that it’s her mistake
She’s here, but someone ought to bring
A net to catch and help her make
Her own connections north to spring.

She cheeps and trills on, swift and sweet,
Though no one outside hears her strains.
There, telescopic tunnels greet
The cheeks of their arriving planes;
A ground crew welcomes and assists
Luggage that skycaps, treating bags
Like careful ornithologists,
Banded with destination tags.

I was exchanging emails with an old high school friend last week discussing our 20-year reunion, coming up this summer. One comment in her email struck me, and I’ve been thinking about it on and off ever since – “Could you have ever imagined 20 years ago that you would be where you are in life today?”

I saw the movie “The Curious Case of Benjamin Button” not too long ago, and one scene in the movie asked a similar question. Brad Pitt’s character narrates an unfolding of events that culminated in an accident that proves crucial to the plot of the movie – “If only one thing had happened differently: if that shoelace hadn’t broken; or that delivery truck had moved moments earlier; or that package had been wrapped and ready, because the girl hadn’t broken up with her boyfriend; or that man had set his alarm and got up five minutes earlier; or that taxi driver hadn’t stopped for a cup of coffee; or that woman had remembered her coat, and got into an earlier cab…”

I can say that I’ve had moments in my life when I’ve applied the same logic to some tragedy or other painful experience – I’m sure we all have. But I can also say that as I sit here sipping a cup of hot tea, my children sleeping quietly down the hall, my cat Emelye curled up in my lap and purring softly, a wedding a few months away, my friends and family on my mind, and a whirl of moments I have experienced, decisions I have made, and paths I could have traveled down, there is a peaceful feeling that life resolves and places us where we are meant to be when we are meant to be there.

Could I have ever imaged 20 years ago that I would be where I am? No. Can I image where I might be tomorrow, or a month or year or 20 years from this moment? No, but like Mary Oliver in this month’s poem, I am extremely optimistic…

Stewart

Mary Oliver
(1935 -  )

Walking To Oak-Head Pond,
And Thinking Of The Ponds I Will Visit
In The Next Days And Weeks

What is so utterly invisible
as tomorrow?
Not love,
not the wind,

not the inside of a stone.
Not anything.
And yet, how often I’m fooled–
I’m wading along

in the sunlight–
and I’m sure I can see the fields and the ponds shining
days ahead–
I can see the light spilling

like a shower of meteors
into next week’s trees,
and I plan to be there soon–
and, so far, I am

just that lucky,
my legs splashing
over the edge of darkness,
my heart on fire.

I don’t know where
such certainty comes from–
the brave flesh
or the theater of the mind–

but if I had to guess
I would say that only
what the soul is supposed to be
could send us forth

with such cheer
as even the leaf must wear
as it unfurls
its fragrant body, and shines

against the hard possibility of stoppage–
which, day after day,
before such brisk, corpuscular belief,
shudders, and gives way.

Today marked the passing of one of the country’s true literary legends, John Updike. I hadn’t featured one of his works since September of 2004, when I shared his poem “The Angels” , so it seemed fitting to dedicate this month’s selection to Updike. I thought this particular poem appropriate to his passing – “…know we go to sleep less to rest than to participate in the twists of another world…”

I hope you enjoy this poem, as we welcome in a New Year, a New Government, a new hope just around the corner…

John Updike
(1932 – 2009)

Tossing and Turning

The spirit has infinite facets,
but the body confiningly few sides.
There is the left,
the right, the back, the belly, and tempting
in-betweens, northeasts and northwests,
that tip the heart and soon pinch circulation
in one or another arm.
Yet we turn each time
with fresh hope, believing that sleep
will visit us here, descending like an angel
down the angle our flesh’s sextant sets,
tilted toward that unreachable star
hung in the night between our eyebrows, whence
dreams and good luck flow.
Uncross your ankles.
Unclench your philosophy.
This bed was invented by others; know we go
to sleep less to rest than to participate
in the twists of another world.
This churning is our journey.
It ends,
can only end, around a corner
we do not know
we are turning.