My pots are packed for New York City and were loaded into the car before the sunset. The low sun back lit the ornamental grasses in the front garden. The dusk swaddled the cattle across the street while Warren walked Luna along the road and around the pond. The night is a gift. I can sit down now that all the pots are wrapped.
December
The year dwindles and glows to December’s red jewel, my birth month.
The sky blushes, and lays its cheek on the sparkling fields.
Then dusk swaddles the cattle, their silhouettes simple as faith.
These nights are gifts, our hands unwrapping the darkness to see what we have.
The train rushes, ecstatic, to where you are, my bright star.
A year ago today we celebrated the life of Mikio Shinagawa. About ten years ago Mikio, Warren and I put together an exhibit of plates to commemorate our friendship and the many years of making pottery for Omen Azen in New York City. Mikio pushed Warren and I to give poetic names to our work. He wanted us to think of them relative to resonances, perhaps thunderstorms or ice, rather than being solely descriptive about the materials and process used. He wanted us to think of our pots like constellations–allusions with stories. Mikio’s most fervent wish for himself and others was to think of providing for the next generation.
Dead Stars
Out here, there’s a bowing even the trees are doing. Winter’s icy hand at the back of all of us. Black bark, slick yellow leaves, a kind of stillness that feels so mute it’s almost in another year.
I am a hearth of spiders these days: a nest of trying.
We point out the stars that make Orion as we take out the trash, the rolling containers a song of suburban thunder.
It’s almost romantic as we adjust the waxy blue recycling bin until you say, Man, we should really learn some new constellations.
And it’s true. We keep forgetting about Antlia, Centaurus, Draco, Lacerta, Hydra, Lyra, Lynx.
But mostly we’re forgetting we’re dead stars too, my mouth is full of dust and I wish to reclaim the rising—
to lean in the spotlight of streetlight with you, toward what’s larger within us, toward how we were born.
Look, we are not unspectacular things. We’ve come this far, survived this much. What
would happen if we decided to survive more? To love harder?
What if we stood up with our synapses and flesh and said, No. No, to the rising tides.
Stood for the many mute mouths of the sea, of the land?
What would happen if we used our bodies to bargain
for the safety of others, for earth, if we declared a clean night, if we stopped being terrified,
if we launched our demands into the sky, made ourselves so big people could point to us with the arrows they make in their minds,
rolling their trash bins out, after all of this is over?
–Ada Limón, From The Carrying (Milkweed Editions, 2018)
My mother loved any kind of light and struggled in the the depth of the winter. She lived for sunsets and candlelight. She made a big effort with Christmas especially for the quality of light and for a generosity of spirit. She even loved the red lights of our car as we left after the holiday. Buying a tree in New York City involved a lot of schlepping and energy so my Dad often grumbled. He also really hated putting up the lights, so much so that when it became my job I was surprised by how easy it was.
Books were always a big part of our holiday. Before I was born Mom and Dad made a series of children’s books. My Mom wrote and illustrated and my Dad made the woodcuts, printed, and then bound the books. Those images are part of my December vocabulary.
A Christmas collaboration between my mother and father
I have been cleaning house and rearranging things so we can welcome Larkin–who is one and newly walking–safely and happily into our house. These cleaning and holiday efforts have me thinking about my Mom. She loved making the holidays special and she loved having it all seem like it was full of light and sparkle. However she also got stressed and exhausted. She had to read all the books she was giving away before they were wrapped. ( No small task.) She tried valiantly to clean up the house before her four children returned home.
I remember one year sitting down to dinner on Christmas Eve when we were all young adults. The tree was lit and decorated, candles were on the table and and before we dug into our meal she announced there is good news and bad news— we all got quiet and listened carefully. First the good news, “We have croissants for breakfast Christmas morning!” Then the bad news, “I dyed everyone’s underwear pink.”
Christmas “tree” in a bottle?
Spending the evening in candlelight, and maybe by the fire – with no TV – talking, telling stories, letting the lit-up world go by without us, expands the hours, and alters the thoughts and conversations we have.
I have noticed that when all the lights are on, people tend to talk about what they are doing – their outer lives. Sitting round in candlelight or firelight, people start to talk about how they are feeling – their inner lives. They speak subjectively, they argue less, there are longer pauses.
–Jeanette Winterson, Why I Adore the Night, October 29, The Guardian
I told myself to walk as the afternoon wore on. I head out looking, listening. It’s more or less the same time each day and yet new details stand out. I found a small animal skull its teeth intact like it had been clenching its jaw. I study the hanging sycamore seed pods against the sky. I go to the end of a private road and circle back. A red tail hawk swoops past between the trees. I see the reflections of muscular geese landing on the pond. What reflection do the geese see?
Lines for Winter
Tell yourself as it gets cold and gray falls from the air that you will go on walking, hearing the same tune no matter where you find yourself— inside the dome of dark or under the cracking white of the moon’s gaze in a valley of snow. Tonight as it gets cold tell yourself what you know which is nothing but the tune your bones play as you keep going. And you will be able for once to lie down under the small fire of winter stars. And if it happens that you cannot go on or turn back and you find yourself where you will be at the end, tell yourself in that final flowing of cold through your limbs that you love what you are.
–Mark Strand, from Selected Poems, 1979, in New Selected Poems (Alfred A. Knopf, 2007)
Out in the late afternoon I felt as if I was immersed in the particles of mist that lingered after the rain. Fog began to settle and the gray blanket swallowed details to the point that the boundaries of my mood and the day softened and dissolved into a smooth sheet. I have been pondering the December gray as the weather report predicts a week of rain. Wondering how to retain my sense of wonder in the continued gray. Sometimes it seems like rain brings out the color in the landscape. But tonight it was the opposite. I wore my tangerine raincoat like a flag waving hello to the people I passed in town.
It is at Dusk that the most interesting things occur, for that is when simple differences fade away. I could live in everlasting Dusk.
–Olga Tokarczuk, from Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead (tr. from the Polish by Antonia Lloyd-Jones)
After errands in town on a rainy dark afternoon Warren and I laughed at how late it felt to be driving home. It was only 5:30 and fully dark. Once home I fed the cat and dog and headed out for a wet night walk. I had the phone flashlight but mostly I felt my way on the ground. Instead of looking I listened for the crunch of gravel and the squish of wet grass. Even when my eyes began to adjust to the darkness, I saw/felt the land differently. The nearby deer shifted; the horses in the field snorted; something else shuffled off, perhaps a possum? I know the paths. So I feel my way, looping around the property skirting the unknown and happy to be welcomed again into the dry warmth of home.
Leave the door open for the unknown, the door into the dark. That’s where the most important things come from, where you yourself came from, and where you will go.
Many years ago after a big storm several long Tulip Poplar branches came down. Warren de-barked these long poles and brought them into the corner of our living room that is more than two stories tall. At the time they reminded Warren of a ladder made by Martin Puryear (Ladder for Booker T. Washington, 1996). A few years ago I wrapped one of the poles with holiday lights. At this time of year I often write at my laptop with just these lights for company as the outside light drains. Other days I leave these twinkles on as I head out for a dusk walk so that the sparkle of small lights welcomes me home.
Our grandson is coming to visit for the holidays, so we plan to make this part of the house more toddler friendly. The poles are heading back to the studio to be reincarnated as something new. It allows me to enjoy these last moments of light and arrangement of furniture before low level fragile things get shifted out of baby finger height. The handiwork with old wood is rekindled by the love of a new life.
Tonight when we decided that no more people were coming to our open studio I headed out for a dog walk with two friends. We looped down the hill and around the pond in the chill air as the moon shone out against the trees standing dark against the sky. We may momentarily lose track of the words to describe our many years of friendship, but still retain an appreciation of being together once again. It was dark as we got back to the warm house. The dog was excited because she knew dinner was imminent. Warren and I have a running disagreement about these early December evenings. Can we call them winter or do they stay autumn until after the solstice?
The trees stand stark against the sky. It is fall, or autumn: sometimes she loses track of which word belongs where. Small matter, it is that time of year when the dark descends early.
– Colum McCann, from “Treaty,” in Thirteen Ways of Looking: A Novella and Three Stories (Random House, 2016)
After our last visitor left this evening I headed out with the dog. From inside the house it appeared to be pitch black, but once outside on the driveway I could see the rich variations of land, sky, clouds and moon. I was glad for the simple task of a dog walk. We headed up the driveway and along the road where we get a broader view of hills, trees and sky. I had explained to various people today my understanding of the idea of nothingness or “Mu.” My walk in the dark was a reminder of the relationship of mystery and darkness, and the sense of the space between things. A feeling of blur and uncertainty became a welcome presence.
The space of nothingness is where one finds his or her own self and life’s richness.
On Tuesday evening I headed out with our dog for a meeting of the dog club to which I belong. It was pitch black out. Warren asked me if I needed a flashlight or a head lamp. At our house when the sun goes down it feels as if there is an infinite dark. I reminded Warren I was going to town. We met at a park with street lamps and although it was a cold evening we could see each other. Our dogs were very aware of each canine. There had been an accident on a nearby street and the whole time we practiced telling our dogs to sit and stay amidst the many variations of instilling dog manners, sirens sang in the distance. There was one dog who was particularly sensitive to sirens and he howled in concert. When I got home fully chilled I could appreciate the dark of our yard and the quiet of our spot we call home.
One Secret
not the brilliant stars but the infinite dark what I wish on
