Author Archives: Ann E. Michael

Verdancy

This report was posted almost a week ago, and the rainless weeks continue; today, fires are climbing their way along Pennsylvania’s forests beside the Delaware River, which looks almost as low as the Rio Grande in Albuquerque when I was there last month. Okay, I exaggerate a bit–but my alarm’s genuine. “No measurable precipitation” here, whereas Valencia, Spain gets a year’s rain in one day and western North Carolina receives 30 inches in two days. This stuff worries me even more than the upcoming election.

I’m not an alarmist, I’m a gardener. When do people start to admit to, and take action about, climate change? (Sorry, rhetorical question.)

~

One theme of the writing workshop I took with Anita Skeen and Cindy Hunter Morgan, as I blogged about here, was color–color as prompt, color as image, color in ekphrastic work, color as inspiration. One prompt was to write about a color you can imagine hating, or a color that you love. It was autumn, and I was in the desert; so I decided to be difficult and write about loving green. Not typically considered an autumn or desert tone, though in fact the high deserts have more green, and in more shades thereof, than most people expect.

Here’s my draft. I used to hate showing unfinished work around, but now I don’t mind doing it. I find the practice of posting/sharing early drafts instructive (and it keeps me mighty humble).

~

Love Is Verdant

Listen, if I were to fall in love again,
it would be with a color: green.
So many variations and hues
ever-changing, surprising me with wilderness,
forest and pine, sage, olive, and moss,
the craziness of chartreuse, 
glossy feathers of the teal.
Green as rushes in swamplands, bamboo
on mountains, diverse as rainforests
and summer tundra lichen, yellow-green
of maple leaves early in autumn,
the pitchy green of piñons high up the mesas.
Sure, there have been times I sought for
love that is constant, but now I know better,
for the only constant is change—and green
can accomplish that with as little as breeze
and sunlight, which are likewise things I love.

~

Photo by Pixabay on Pexels.com

Drought, again

The temperatures here in this eastern Pennsylvania valley have been mild, even warm, which isn’t that unusual for October, anymore. What’s different is the lack of rain. Northern New Mexico had more rain the past three weeks than our region did. Now that is unusual, and a bit worrisome. Our local trees have been enduring numerous stresses in recent years: irregular rainfall, invasive insects, road construction and housing developments, run-off, and viruses. Droughty autumns and winters do not make for resilient, happy trees and other perennials, unless they are desert varieties.

I love the desert, but the Lehigh Valley (where I live) is not primed to be a desert. We need the temperate moisture of rivers flowing down to sea level and 50″ of rain each year. It would be interesting to learn xeriscaping and how to garden in low-moisture regions, but only if I were living in one. I’ve been concerned for a long time about the climate changes I see occurring around me, noted the differences year by year in my gardening journal, tried to limit my own water use even in this temperate, damp-ish area. But. On my own, I cannot conserve enough water to keep the 70-foot-tall tulip trees and large oaks and colorful maples healthy. Nor the soil and its microorganisms, fungi, understory plants, and useful arthropods.

True, sometimes the long days of rain and overcast skies we get in autumn, winter, and spring feel oppressive; and they make my joint pains flare. But I count for little, whereas the earth counts for a lot. I’d gladly trade some low-barometer aches for a vibrant, healthy local climate.

~

The frosts, though light and few, are arriving now. Maybe we will get rain by Election Day? I have too many hopes for next week. Best not to speculate; I can wait.

In the meantime, I have just finished reading Cindy Hunter Morgan’s very beautiful new collection, Far Company, and I recommend it, especially if you like poetry with an environmental resonance and poems of memoir and recalled experience. Purchase it from Wayne State, not Amazon, if you can. To frustrate a certain billionaire, not that he will notice.

We do the small things, right?

Two falls

I have experienced two autumns this October: one in New Mexico, one in Pennsylvania. In the American Southwest, high up in the world, the cottonwood trees that hug every available water source were going a brilliant gold while I was there. Any view above a creek or river revealed a winding path of yellow–along the Chama, along the Rio Grande. The tiny-leaved oaks were turning brown-leaved and dropping scads of acorns along the paths. The oranges and reds are mostly there year-round, on the mesas and in the canyons.

https://mjskitchen.com/2018/11/chama-river-valley-new-mexico/

It was wonderful to experience a poetry workshop with Anita Skeen and Cindy Hunter Morgan and to learn how books are made by hand, wonderful to draft some poems using color imagery and ekphrasis, wonderful to meet some fascinating people with whom I enjoyed pushing past my/our comfort zones and into art forms we may have been a bit less comfortable with. These are reasons to attend an instructor-led workshop, seminar, or residency. I spent part of last September in New Mexico, but it wasn’t the most spectacular time for autumn coloration–whereas October certainly gleams in northern NM!

When I returned home, I had missed “peak season” for color in Pennsylvania; my husband said that came a bit early this year because of drought. But it’s still very bright here. The maple leaves haven’t all fallen, most of the tulip trees are still yellow, the hickories haven’t reached peak gold yet, and many of the sassafras are that warm coral color I love so well. The burning bushes? Ours hasn’t dropped its bright fuchsia-maroon leaves. It’s a vivid presence at the corner of the house.

~

Therefore, I have two autumns this year, one sea-level Mid-Altlantic East, and one high-altitude Southwest.

Which strikes me as an abundance of beauty and color. So I am continuing the theme of last week’s workshop. Here’s a new draft of a new poem just for the joy of it. [This fall, those of us in the USA could use a bit of joy.]


I don’t have a title for it yet. Maybe you can help me think of one.

~


The difference between orange leaf color
and orange rock color.
Between the greens of grass and juniper,
the pale dun of meadow’s die-back
and beige sand stretching westward
to the mountains.
Even the clear sky’s blueness
on fair, mild mornings
differs by an almost measurable degree.
Something to do with altitude
and aridity, the science of which
I don’t really understand.
Life’s variations and hues—
striated like cliffs, buttes, mesas,
like hills of maple and hickory in fall—
beautiful and strange.
Even when I close my eyes, color-
memories, all those shades
I can’t define, sift through my skin.
Into blood. Into bone.

With color

I’m taking a break from the garden and from the news cycle and indulging in a different form of work: “Making Poems, Making Books,” a 4-day workshop with poets Anita Skeen and Cindy Hunter Morgan at Ghost Ranch in Abiquiu, NM. Yes, I’ll be making my own book–a small accordion book. There are about a dozen of us in the workshop, which is centered around the idea of color. Autumn in northern New Mexico offers a range of hues somewhat different from the post-equinox colors of eastern Pennsylvania. Perhaps that will inspire me. The last time I took a workshop here was in 1993, and I learned how to draw/paint in chalk pastels. A long time ago–and yet, walking around the dusty alfalfa field in the center of the Ranch’s office and dorm buildings, I felt completely at home. As if I’d been here just last year.

This week differs from the artist residency I attended at Joya-AiR in May because I’m part of a class getting instruction in how to make a hand-made book and also participating in feedback on our writing. Nonetheless, every afternoon there’s a nice stretch of time to work on solo projects, hike, drive to some nearby sites of interest, or nap. I will admit I have been doing more napping than I had hoped. The high altitude, dry air, walking more than usual (on rocky trails) and the emotional energy it takes to learn a new skill and meet new people have conspired to creep up on me some afternoons.

That’s fine with me, though, because I’m banking many images, quotes, anecdotes, ideas, prompts–all the things memory can do.

And I am drafting some new work, so there’s that as well.

~

Enjoying the session and the people, third best thing about this trip. Being back at Ghost Ranch, second best thing, though it is perfectly wonderful. Best thing? Getting some time in the Albuquerque area to visit with my daughter and her partner. And their dog. And their cat, guinea pigs, and beehives. According to her, bees kept in hives (apiculture) are considered considered agricultural animals.

Who knew?

It’s time for my nap, I think. But I have wanted to post about this workshop/retreat before I get home again, just to remind myself of how grateful I am to be here, to be writing, to be seeing my child, to be–yes–escaping from the media frenzy as the presidential election looms. If that seems like something you need, as well, all I can do is send a few cheerful photos I took at the Albuquerque Balloon Fiesta.

~

Northern stars

Northern Stars (2023) Celestino Marco Cavalli

~

A phosphorescent path
connecting Italy and France
through glowing stones
that look like stars.
A poetic and political action.

~

https://www.celestinomarcocavalli.xyz/work.html

The installation shown here was created by one of the artists I met while at Joya, Celestino Marco Cavalli. The link above will take you to a description of his project. In brief, it is a series of fluorescent-painted stones that follow a trail refugees travel on their way from the Mediterranean, through Italy, and into France. The website does not include the many photographs Celestino took during his 5-month visit there to document the conditions under which emigrants travel–the trash they leave as they abandon belongings, the graffiti and the notes to others they leave in caves and hollows, the prayers they write, the places they shelter from the sun or rain or cold weather. Do the refugees litter the mountain paths? Yes. Do they do so out of desperation? Also yes.

This installation is innovative, compassionate, and political–also problematic; as always, borders between nations are fraught with concerns about each country’s boundaries, laws, rules and regulations. These days, most immigrants taking this trail (through Italy) have come from the global south, where the climate damage wrought by industrial nations has made living in poverty even harder and fostered political unrest. And the immigrants take huge risks–with no guarantees that they won’t be deported, or preyed upon by criminals who exploit their vulnerable status.

I’ve never been a refugee, an exile, an immigrant. I have met quite a few, though–often very young people, students I encountered at the college where I worked, students from Haiti, Dominican Republic, Turkey, Syria, Lebanon, Mexico, Venezuela, Pakistan, Eritrea, Viet Nam, Kenya…and my husband’s stepmother, who arrived at Ellis Island from Austria between the wars. And a colleague who was stranded at college in the USA when the Ayatollah took power in Iran, and a fellow employee from Cambodia, who lost her entire family except for one brother to the Khmer Rouge. Whenever I hear about the politics of immigration (which is often), I think of them: how hard they work, what they sacrificed to get here, how hopeful they are, how challenging their lives have been and continue to be. And their grief.

The following is a persona poem--"A persona poem is a poem in which the poet speaks through an assumed voice" (Academy of American Poets). Celestino's Northern Stars is my "prompt."

~

Refugees

Because we must hide by day
and travel at night, darkness hinders.
The narrow stony trail offers options:
turned ankles, torn skin, or a precipice
that takes us sliding down the mountain,
an avalanche of self, death’s prospect.
No one arrives eager for exile;
we’re just trying to save ourselves,
our families, a few belongings
we used to think were precious.

The way we take may be steep—
everyone knows that metaphor—
what we never expect is how much
it is an unburdening of all
we thought was necessary,
an education in physical need.
Shoes, for instance, more critical
than underwear. Ancestors emigrated 
on callused feet without watches 
or water bottles. The least cut could 
go septic, a child’s wail could betray us
to predators or enemies. Still true.

One by one we let things go, abandoned
in shallow caves with other people’s
remnants, plastic bags and t-shirts,
books, candlesticks, so much trash after all—
even our skins can barely hold what
we need anymore. We arrive shriven,
numb as feldspar, having walked so long.
May we have water? May we rest, with our
children in our laps, and sing the songs
our parents taught us not so long ago.

Just reading

Sunday evening, my weeding stirred up so much dust and chaff that I needed to wear a bandanna around my nose and mouth. A continuous late-summer drought. There are still tomatoes and basil, sunflowers and zinnias, but the avian migration has been going on for some weeks and the days are getting shorter. Just after equinox, three weeks without rain; at last the sky clouds over and drops a little moisture on the parched soil. Yellow leaves sift onto the lawn. Small flocks of robins rejoice in the softer top layer of dirt, pull at grubs and worms, then fly off.

~

The rain’s necessary, and I’m grateful. Rainy days, however, take issue with my body–or, probably, the other way around. The need to take NSAIDs and rest offers the opportunity for just reading. This isn’t a bad thing, especially as I had Richard Powers’ novel The Gold Bug Variations to hand. It’s a tour de force of pattern, structure, code-breaking, DNA-building, relationships, love, chemistry, music, art, literature, and much more. I love the references (the narrator is a reference librarian), the minutia, history, alliteration, lists, compilations*, the whole thread of the novel’s dramatic arc, its relationship (mathematically, metaphorically, structurally) to music and the work of the gene-sequencing science. The book tells the parallel stories of couples who fall in love 25 years apart, the coincidences and randomness, the patterns that may not be patterns. I’m thoroughly wowed by an author who puts so much research into his writing and makes everything fit somehow.

Powers must have been about 33 when he completed this novel. I can’t imagine being so wise about human behavior and so informed about the sciences and music theory at that young age. Well, for one, I’m not as brilliant as he is; and two, I was raising toddlers when I was 33, which is a science unto itself and as revelatory as any book I could have been reading or writing in early mid-life.

But I digress. This book interests me on so many levels that I’ll be thinking about it for weeks. I may have to re-read it, take notes next time. I kept wanting to underline passages–it’s a library book, and marginalia is a no-no. I can imagine reading it again to the strains of the Goldberg Variations–indeed, I read a few chapters to said accompaniment this time. This is not a swift and easy read: it took me awhile to feel warmed up about the narrator, though she’s funny and smart. By the end, I loved her like a friend.

Honestly, novels seldom get me this excited or inspired. I’m glad I had a crappy day so I could justify lying around and “just reading.” As if “just reading” is not a worthwhile endeavor. The weeds can wait.

~

* re compilations: a word Powers employs often in this novel is the neologism/computer programming term “kludge.” I wasn’t familiar with it. But it’s a terrific word! https://www.etymonline.com/search?q=kludge

Crabgrass

I have been at work in the vegetable garden during the past few dry, sunny, late-summer days–it has been rather droughty here–and pulling up weeds in an effort to get an early start on putting the patch to bed for autumn. I have decided not to do any late-season sowing this year, and therefore I can pretty much tear up everything if I feel like it. Today I was thinking about my mother-in-law, who died in 2017, but who was sometimes my partner in the garden, or I in hers, when we were younger. I learned a great deal about ornamentals from her.

At her property, crabgrass was a particular scourge. I remember us weeding flower beds together while she muttered, “Crabgrass! Always crabgrass, how I hate it!” It struck me odd at the time that she pronounced it “crebgrass,” with the first “a” like a short “e”, because she said the word “crab” and similar words with an open short “a.” It was almost as though she reserved that pronunciation to express her ire at this particular weed. She liked weeding at my house partly because I had so little crabgrass. Plenty of other weeds, but not much crabgrass.

Our weeding together took place over 15 years ago, when my gardens were on the new side, maybe a decade old. Today, however, I find my vegetable patch very much colonized by digitaria sanguinalis…one of the finger grasses, a very successful weed that can produce 150,000 seeds per plant. My garden now hosts both smooth and large crabgrass; the former is much easier to pull, though it can set seed even when it is mowed to under an inch in height! Large crabgrass, when it gets going, can grow over a foot tall and have a base rosette of 10″ with a star-like (or crab-like) set of leaves and quite tenacious roots, for an annual.

While I worked (too late, I really should have gotten to the weeds long before they began to set seed), I heard my mother-in-law in my mind: “Crebgrass! How I hate it.” Well, dearest Gene, I have finally encountered the Eurasian colonizer in my own gardens. And I miss having you around to sympathize with my plight.

 Maudib | Credit: Getty Images

There’s a metaphor here, I know there is. Maybe there’s a poem in this experience, too? For the time being, pulling weeds reminds me of someone I loved–and takes my mind off of another person I love, whose dwindling and decline (her “diminishing”) stay uneasily in the background of everything I do these days.

In the between-season time, with autumn almost upon us, I want to remind myself of the joys that come along with the crabgrass. Such as the brown crickets and the morning glories and the goldenrod…and memories of people for whom I have cared a great deal.

~

báilù

白露 báilù is the section of the lunisolar calendar that refers to the two weeks before the autumnal equinox; the translation is “white dew.” Misty mornings here and there, damp grass, dew spangling the tent spider webs in the meadow, draping the grasses and goldenrod with white gauze. Brown crickets sing, but the cicadas have left off. Nuthatches return. Squirrels knock walnuts off the branches daily, so there’s a regular thump-thump sound along the treeline. My summer-loving acquaintances bemoan the cooler days and insist summer’s not over until the 21st. My fall-loving acquaintances are picking apples and celebrating the return of pumpkin-spice flavoring to their favorite beverages.

I like the in-between times, the verging of seasons, aspects of change. Change means life, even though the onset of autumn traditionally signals the dying of the year. On my walk this morning, I took photos and made a mental list of changes that are flags of the coming season: acorns on the bough; morning glory still open at noon (in Japanese literature, the morning glory is a signal of autumn’s approach); burning bush shrub going pink; pennants of yellow walnut leaves; ripe wild grapes–deep navy blue, quite sour, and full of seeds; sweet autumn clematis (terniflora) in its whirly seed state, swarming over the hedges; oak leaves, five-leaf vines, and sassafras starting to color; winterberries already red; acorn detritus on the tractor path; pin oak galls (probably thanks to the wasp Callirhytis furva) on a leaf. All of these are mid-September features in eastern PA.

If I were feeling more poetically creative, I might try writing haiku using each of these as the image word. But my current state is fretful. Pulling weeds and taking walks ease my mind a bit. Sitting down to write, not so much. However, reader, I encourage you to try the exercise.

~

Helpless

The weeding continues apace. I no longer do a clean rake-up of the gardens in autumn, because I now know that bees and other creatures overwinter in foliage debris; but it is imperative that I get the worst of the vines and perennial invasives out of the beds. We had a bit of rain recently, so I went out to claw and pull. Underneath the spreading Japanese maple, I found this:

~

At first, I thought I’d found a fungus. Upon poking, I realized it appeared to be sections of a paper wasp nest. Hmmm. It took some craning of my neck and crawling much further beneath the tree, but there it was–the remains of a paper wasp hive dangling above me. Certainly it looked unoccupied, but I crept out from under the boughs just in case.

Under the tree, and twined throughout the flowerbed, I found quite a few sumac seedlings and plenty of poison ivy vines. Sumac and poison ivy are native plants, not invasive species like loosestrife and wintercreeper, but I don’t fancy having them in my perennial gardens. More yanking will be required soon.

~

At least I am doing something that, while rather disheartening–the weeds will always come back, weeding’s as endless as housework–keeps me moving and outdoors and occupied so that my mind whirs around less. It appears I’m weeding as a coping strategy while my mother continues to spiral toward whatever is next for her. Hospice care. Death. The inevitable, with the unknown “when”.

What bothers me most about her situation is how helpless she has become. My mom endured some childhood traumas, times when she truly was helpless. She learned to find and deal with her anger, with trouble and conflict, with physical pain, but she hates feeling helpless. And over the years, her inherent pragmatism and stubbornness, as well as her patience and a little emotional counseling, have served her well. I can only recall once when I saw her feeling helpless (and only briefly). It rattled me, but I was also impressed by how quickly she regained emotional equilibrium and took a small action toward…well, toward not being helpless.

And now, she is. Helpless, I mean. She cannot speak, feed herself, walk, or even sit up unassisted in bed. The prognosis for her recovery is so-so. She may manage to regain a little self-sufficiency. Or not. After all, she’s 91 years old.

The paper wasp hive seems like an analogy to me. When it has served its purpose, for all that it sheltered its denizens so well, it rattles apart, breaks down bit by bit, no longer resembles itself. Helpless in the wake of another winter coming on.

~

My father never cared for Neil Young, didn’t like his vocal delivery. But my mom heard the Déjà Vu album over and over in our house when we were teens, and she liked it.

~

Poem-ish thing

I don’t really feel ready to write what’s on my mind today. I do appreciate the cooler weather that means I can mindlessly pull weeds from the perennial beds and the vegetable garden without sweating or sunburn. Here’s a spur-of-moment poem-ish thing to mark, for myself, the place I’m at.

~

All morning, redtails shriek overhead
pleas or threats
or just announcing their presence
they don't much care 
how I interpret them.
I don't interpret them.
Listen only for brown crickets,
whirring cicadas that have begun
to wind down late in August.
My father died in an election year
77 days before he could have
cast his vote. I'm reminded of that now,
how distracted I was and how,
though the election mattered,
my father mattered more.
For most of us, what's near the heart 
obscures other concerns. Look:
there is dew on the grass,
barn swallows have 
already left the garden.
~