Chicago:
A student dreamed
arches, bridges, homes.
Everywhere he looked
one more school of solid,
one more example of
Sandburg’s broad shoulders.
Montauk, Sears, Reliance, Rookery,
Wright, Mies, Sullivan–
none could stop his slope
down, under the bridge
and then home,
under a newspaper
ads for palm tree warmth.
He rose, all long white hair
and smell, grumbling
at horrified commuters
heading home.
© 2019 L. Koenig
(image of the Montauk Building, Chicago, from the creative commons)
I thought I was being clever creating a unique email address for this blog. But then the pandemic hit, my sister died, and I just gave up on some things.
Like the blog.
Like poetry.
So it was a hassle recovering my blog.
And I think I am ready to return to poetry, not that poetry has missed me.
My brother died recently, and I am grieving in a weird way. ANGRY, sad, angry, sad. So angry.
Writing might help.
I am pursuing helping others with literacy growth in a big way, tutoring ESL, GED, and teaching literacy classes–in my retirement. This lets me know how much I value literacy.
My trusty OLD laptop died, and I replaced it right away. This lets me know how much I value literacy.
As I try to recover old documents, I am trying to find more than 1/3 of a MILLION documents created. This lets me know how much I value literacy. As I read some of my poetry and fiction/ nonfiction, I find pieces I want to edit and revise.
I need to get the twitter bashers out of my mind’s eye, for they almost took away my desire to write poetry. Use the wrong word or use the wrong voice and you can be canceled, vilified.
So here’s to grief (again? still?) and a continuing pandemic I’d like to write away. That won’t happen, but perhaps I can find the joy of creation once again if I stop listening to the voices of the poet and poetry bashers who seem to pounce if a wrong word or tone or voice is used, even unwittingly, even when trying to create art. (Persona poems are one of my favorite types.)
And here’s to writing down passwords and email logins somewhere else!
Happy new year, all. And thanks for reading.
Poetry has left me during this pandemic. When the world and others are deemed as not safe, this HSP has become HYPER vigilant, resulting in poor sleep and increasing bad habits.
I know I have so many privileges. I know that, but as the saying goes, nothing is ever truly forgotten.
So I had my spring plants/ flowers daily watch, and it was wonderful. Crocus, scylla, trilium, May apples, Virginia bluebells and more. I took some online classes. I tutor and continue to tutor.
And perhaps poetry will come back. During this pandemic, I cannot say that poetry has saved me, for the trauma is primitive and only after some relief from trauma can I return to art, to poetry. If poetry never returns, there is life, love, nature, beauty. Poetry in their own way.
Recipe for constriction:
Twenty years of complicated trauma plus four years of being stalked by a violent “friend” taught about being hyper vigilant–for more than six decades. Have her injured and retired much earlier than planned, and just beginning to find her way during this retirement. Have her proud for not overreacting for news of a novel virus; no, this time she will not stock up or freak out. It’s on the other side of the world, right? Right? Add grief for a lost sister and a state of shock about her new reality.
Add the pandemic.
Click. Knowing she is privileged. Knowing how many are suffering physically and emotionally. Guilt over privilege. I know, she will give up something she loves, make a sacrifice. Bye bye, poetry. She will volunteer more and more, to help others. She finds students who need help and mails lessons, materials, makes phone calls. Tutors.
Click. Husband forced retired early due to pandemic. Lucky, lucky they are and they know it. Able to do this, rather than face the pandemic daily, face first, face to face.
Click. His former employer is no longer paying him since he doesn’t work there anymore. He’s having to deal with sudden retirement.
And they are lucky, and they know it. Yet it is scary to have to be so worried about money once again, after five decades of working hard to get out of debt and be sufficient.
It is, however, a recipe for constriction, a recipe to kill poetry. It is a recipe for clenched jaws that make her jaw muscles so strong, they could snap wire. CLICK, CLICK, CLICK.
See, see what happens that one time you decide not to be hyper vigilant, not to worry and stock up.
The days are okay, for there is sunlight and she forces herself to take nature walks, one thing not denied. It’s healthy to walk. Stay away from others on the path, wear a mask.
But the nights close in and find nightmares returning, ruminations, constrictions. Worries. More rumination. This is not what she had planned for retirement. She knows how lucky she is. She misses people more than she can say. She likes people. She misses her sister. She is with grief and night, grief for the pandemic, for the loss of her sister, for the “so that was my career” thoughts. She uses carbs to calm herself. All the carbs.
I knew somehow this would happen, she thinks. I am getting older by the day. I’ll never be able to enjoy retirement. I miss work. I miss teaching. I am living a meaningless life right now, helping no one and doing nothing, she thinks, even while knowing she would never judge another this harshly.
She walks more during the day, even on the days when the windchill is dangerous. She only stops on the days when the house door is frozen shut. Not trusting the gym during an airborne virus pandemic, she walks the halls at night and frets.
Be hyper vigilant. There is a killer novel virus. Stay away from others. Wash those hands very often. Be hyper vigilant. You should have been hyper vigilant. See? Told you so.
Twenty years of complicated trauma plus four years of being stalked by a violent “friend” taught about being hyper vigilant. For more than six decades. Did you suddenly forget important life lessons?
Before the pandemic, she was writing a lot of poetry and publishing; after the pandemic, the constriction, the clenched jaws and the nightmares prohibit poetry.
More or less. Things are opening up now. She is trying not to over react to words such as variant. She is trying to relax enough to read poetry. She is trying to write again, to write poetry. She has found nature classes online bring joy and looking up and looking down while walking in the woods shows her the unimaginable beauties she never saw before in her work, work, work, work days.
She thinks about a pandemic, privilege, and poetry. She knows deeply how lucky she has been. She knows that her mind and body didn’t seem to care, that she reacted at a primitive level of survival. She knows she should be more relaxed and joyful as the new pandemic rules ease up, as people are able to socialize again, get out more again. She knows it is much safer now than fifteen months ago. She knows it’s her rotten trauma responses keeping her on the edge, hyper vigilant, getting her mind full of stinking thinking. She knows how much she misses her career, teaching, and misses people. She knows she should lighten up.
More or less.
(Image from the Creative Commons)
I am pleased to learn my poem, “Pray with Bones,” will be published in High Shelf Press, online and in print on October 15th. I work shopped this poem in a class this summer, and must thank my colleagues there.
I’ve always liked this poem, but could not find a home for it for a long time. It is weird–but I admit to liking it. Grief and elephants–how could I not like my own poem?
In a fit of gloominess, I was just about the withdraw ALL my submissions everywhere–to match my mood.
Glad I didn’t. And once again, I hid grief in a poem.
Thanks for reading.
#poetry#amwriting #HighShelfPress
Today, the smell of the fresh cut grass reminded me of early spring, when students sit in school and begin to get spring fever. They still have a few months to go before summer break, but they feel the fever deep inside—they need to be outside. What I sometimes would tell them is that we teachers also felt spring fever, and that it is so hard for us to keep teaching adjectives and adverbs, Macbeth and Les Mis, and that we dread the testing season in April because we too need to be outside.
Every head turns to the windows if we hear the roar of that first spring motorcycle, and I have to turn my face away from the students when I hear this, for the gray skirt and muddy boots and salt stained old leather shoes and the puffy coat are just too much to deal with when I need spring as well, but I must say, “Students, settle down. We have to get ready for the big tests coming up.”
This year was the Pandemic spring of 2020, the not-spring. I had planned to write down each day of spring news: what date did the rolled up green open to leaves? What day did the first hint of crepe paper yellow show on the witch hazel? What day did the snow drops bloom? And did the trout lily survive, did the daffodil bulbs make it through the squirrel’s hunt? What’s the earliest date the chipmunks emerge, their metabolisms too fast to survive winter while awake?
This year, there was
no spring, only a season
of trying not to breathe.
On 7-21-1970, I was walking to work (one hour walk there, one hour walk home…to work two hours…) and thinking, oh man, I have to work until I’m 65? I was flipping burgers, cleaning tables, working with the public.
Folks, I am 65 years old today. To say I am stunned would be true, for how did this happen so quickly?
Wait, there were many long days and nights–but so much went so quickly!
I had a business career and then a teaching career. I am still teaching after retirement and loving it. I am tutoring, writing poetry, and living as well as I can.
***As to grief, picking up a bottle of Aleve yesterday had me crying over my sister. I miss having a sister so much. I would send her or bring her Aleve for she was in pain for so many years. I looked at the long list of things I brought to her and ordered for her and could almost chart her decline that way. At first they would just be gifts or nice things for her apartment. And little by little they became necessities to keep her from excruciating pain. How horrible to live for 40 years in excruciating pain. I’m very sorry that happened to her and I miss her a lot.
Looking back now I can see she knew that her end near and that she had made peace with this.Towards the last half year of her life, my sister wasn’t able to read, drive, walk sleep. She had a series of agonizing painful days. Towards the very end, she forgot how to use the telephone. She kept losing things such as her phone and would be on the floor for days. She wanted to stay living alone on her own and refused living with anyone else. That was her right. That’s how she wanted it. Adamantly. Still, it was very sad seeing her not able to use the phone, remember her phone number, or even remember that if she touched the number on her phone screen she could dial her number. She got very afraid at the end because she knew she couldn’t remember things. We think it was brain cancer or loss of oxygen to the brain.
My sister was not very compliant with hospice wishes. She wanted to live on her terms and then die. And that’s what she did.
Still, she did manage to go out for coffee one last time and flirt with the wait staff. She wanted one more Christmas holiday but that was not to be, so I will make sure to celebrate for the both of us.
And life goes on on my end. I’m retired but still teaching. Tutoring. Writing poetry.I am now the age she was when she passed away last year and I will soon be older than my older sister ever was.I know it was horrible pain for her at the end especially, but I miss my sister very much.
(Photo taken by me at the Chicago Windows, the Art Institute of Chicago, artist Marc Chagall.)
Sometimes, Poems
Perhaps it was his apology to his children, after all, his gentleness with and joyful love for his grandchildren.
Or perhaps it was the lessening of pressures due to not having a direct responsibility for the lives of little ones.
Whatever the reason, it helped his children and hurt them at the same time to see what might have been, what they longed for but did not have. While they did not want the grandchildren to have a lesser life with their grandfather, they felt openings, more holes in their own lives witnessing what might have been.
Some holes became filled with bad habits and some remained unfilled like Langston’s open sore, weeping then crusting over, and sometimes exploding. A breakdown. A prayer. An addiction. A hesitance. More holes.
And sometimes, poems.
Image in the public domain, The Favorite – Grandfather and Grandson, by Georgios Jakobides (1890)
Attempts at specular poems, and yes, I probably need to leave the sparrows alone. They appear too often in my poetry; however, I do love sparrows since they STAY ALL WINTER and provide some color, sound, movement even during the dull dreariness of November, December, January, and February.
Specular poems are a form where halfway through the lines repeat themselves in a mirrored order.
Image of the American Tree Sparrow from the Creative Commons.
Thanks for reading!
Since my sister died last month, I’ve been re-experiencing grief in different ways than when grief last visited. Before, I was filled with sadness. Now, I am experiencing sadness, but also regret and dread. I think of what a cliche comparing depression to having a black cloud hanging over your head, but that image is strong with me now.
I am older now than when the others died so quickly, one after another after another, 15 years older. And my sister and I had a complicated relationship. We were estranged for some years, as is common in families where the abusive parent tries to keep the siblings apart by telling lies about each other and sewing discord. Nevertheless, my sister and I found ourselves to become much loved dear friends for most of our lives. We were such different people, but we shared a long history of trauma and grief, but also humor, laughing, and a love of nature. After my sister had her children, who are now in their 40s, we became dear friends.
Fifteen years ago I wrote more poetry than ever, as I converted grief into words. I wrote about divorce, break ups,winter, sicknesses, illnesses, aging. I had to warn my husband that divorce was code for grief, as I could not write about death then.
It was a time of great creativity, and looking back, I can feel that grief again–a purer type of grief, perhaps, since those lost then were never other than positive in my life, family and friends who shared only positive emotions in my life.
One of the poems I started writing back then, “Not Sleep,” I finished much later and have recently had published in Cagibi, a Literary Place.
I do like this poem, and could only write it many months after the death of my mother. I could return to it then only years later.
I wonder how my sister’s death will affect my poetry writing. I would give up writing poetry forever if I could have her alive again and healthy and happy, but that cannot happen. Writing about her would be very difficult, for we had a complicated relationship.
I felt sorry for her. I pitied her sometimes. I had great sympathy for her suffering. I loved her, and felt I understood many of the seemingly unfathomable things she did to drive others away. I wasn’t married to her, was not raised by her–we had the relationship of peers who reacted to our shared traumas in very different ways. I found her very brave.
I am still too raw to talk much about her or write much about her, since she has only been gone a month. We are entering winter weather already here and it’s dark so much of the day. All these, blended with a recent injury and job change have me a bit bewildered at times and needing to step back, check my thinking, and affirm this: although I sometimes feel great dread lately, that does not make things dreadful. I need to question my automatic feelings and force myself to perceive, love, enjoy the many beauties in life.
My husband asked me the other day if I am feeling mortal; yes, I told him, that’s a great way to put it. No matter what, my sister is still dead. No matter how many times I pick up the phone to call her, she’s still dead. No matter how many times I think I want to tell her something, she is still dead. No matter how many times I think of something that could have made her last months better, she is still dead. No matter how angry or sad, outraged or fearful, she is still dead. No matter how much regret I feel for things I should have done or should have done differently with my sister, she is still dead.
Mortal, yes. Feeling very mortal, which has also prompted me to clean closets, read books, write poetry again, sign up for a class. If I feel I need to turn on ALL of the lights at home, I do so. If I want pumpkin pancakes, I get them. I am pushing myself to exercise more, for I know good health is so important to loving life. I am resisting the urge to get another job, because I have recognized that long term, this gift of time off is a precious gift.
What will I do with my life? It’s exciting yet scary to imagine! Sometimes I envision myself staying in bed, jaws clenched, covers pulled over my head, in some dramatic made for TV movie of the week about death and depression. Other times I think–April will come again, chorus frogs will return, I’ll get that storage room cleaned out, I’ll read another great novel, I will make new friends and develop new skills and wonder.
* * *
Thanks for reading. Interesting how I can be succinct when writing poetry, such as “Not Sleep,” while I am so wordy with prose.
Laura Lee 