Cupids Dart...or Discovering Richard Blanco

There is a hard edge...a chilling touch that winter brings to my being...it feels so different from the way it looks. Today the snow is soft, falling silent in large fluffy flakes. There is no wind. Just the steady soft falling of large flaky snow...softening the branches of trees, erasing any dirt...grit...dog mess...making the whole landscape clean and awaiting its potential. The whole landscape is a sheet of white paper begging for me to make my tracks. Last night Stephen and I went to listen to Innaugural Poet Richard Blanco, read from his work. We sat high up in the balcony where there were many empty seats. Looking down into the auditorium showed a large crowd gathered to listen to his poetry. I could relate to so much of what he expresses. No. I am not an immigrant to this country but as a child, I always did feel that I landed amoungst a family of folks living in a city that I struggled to relate to. I felt like I spoke another language...suffered from a severe sense of being misunderstood. I listened to his loving portraits of family who couldn't provide him with what he needed. And yet...he provided what he needed for himself. After all...as a poet, he has been heard and appreciated and called by the President to speak his heart into the mainstream...and the mainstream recieves him with love. A community celebrates him and his success...lending his purpose credibility...affirmation...and a soil fertile for further development.
I applaud his tender honesty and feel myself looking within myself with an eye that has a slightly shifted perspective. After the reading and the chorus of Happy Birthday sung by the audience at the end of his questions and answers...I left the auditorium with an arrow piercing my heart with sadness.
I see myself scribbling poems and hiding them amoung the hundreds of pages of writing that fills my journals. I remember the hopeful self that sent out poems for publication...and the rejected self bravely tacking up rejection notices and pretending not to be affected. I remember the angry self that sang choruses of "I don't care". I remember the sarcastic self that feathered her edges with bright scathing comments and critisms of herself and others who couldn't understand the need to put feelings into word pictures...revealing a vulnerability that I feared would cause my heart to stop beating altogether. One year...it nearly did stop beating...and since then, I have veered away from poetry...like a captive bird beating its wings against the bars of a cage, I eventually gave up. Feeling like my efforts were in vain, I became the silence...the soft dusting of snow...trying for something deeper...I look out the window to where the swing sits beneath the birch tree. I think of Robert Frost and the Swinger of Birches...and being in a heartspace of no language, I wonder at the beating of my heart...the new obsession to create felted birds out of soft wool roving...and I think back about the poet Elise who has enjoyed a small amount of success with certain poems. A cardinal lands in the birch...and it's sweet notes pierce the silence like a bright watercolor painting. I loved listening to Richard...reveled in his success as America's Inaugural Poet...and in doing so, I managed to find a tenderness inside myself for the poet that is me. So what is this aching in my heart? This pierce of a dart to my bleeding heart? This discovery of Richard Blanco? It seems to be the wild voice of my own soul...realizing the need to sing for the sake of song...and if someone hears and understands...so much for the miracle of communication. A wholeness is born. A seed is planted. A cardinal lands in the birch tree. And a hand claps in the wilderness. Singing Happy Birthday to Richard awakens the birth of my inner poet...a wild thing with feathers and a song.

BIRDLOVE

I've been a bird lover all my life. How can I describe how they thrill me with their cheerful winter songs, their friendly calls between individuals...the chickadee with it's undaunted cheerfulness and persistence during all manner of weathers...the bold Goldfinches that inspire me to wear my black and yellow jacket on the mountain where I practice my flight. Skiing is about as close to flight as I'll ever get...given I prefer to keep my feet firmly planted on the ground.
Once we moved to Maine, I became aquainted with the beautiful Rose Breasted Grosbeak. They head south for the winter and with the hummingbirds, leave a great void when they go. For such small packages, their presence and personality are huge. Since last winter when I spent every other weekend sitting with my Mom, I have learned to needle felt. At first I began with two dimensional squares with pictures of birds. I started with a chickadee kit that I recieved as a gift from my dear friend April last Christmas. I had never heard of felting before that. But once I got my kit and began my friendship with the craft, I did some research online and discovered felting was one of the original folk arts of the Bronze Age and that once the nature of wool was discovered by runners who put wool fluff between their feet and their sandals to ease skin breakdown, women began felting small pictures of animals to decorate and protect their homes. Early on, a picture of a bird or animal was believed to carry the same qualities as the bird or animal. Like the pictographs drawn on skins and tents or cave walls, the small felted pictures helped to invite in the good energies while staving off the negative ones. Over the course of the winter, I made about 14 small pictures of various songbirds that frequent my feeder here in Maine. The last bird I felted was a small Northern Sawwhet Owl. Maybe it was the long hours sitting with my Mom...or the practice of the craft...or maybe just something deep inside was touched by the portrait of the owl. I found it to be my favorite picture and before I knew it, I was needle felting baby Sawwhet owls in little 3 inch sculptures. I made about 10 of them before winter yielded completely to spring and the need to be outside out grew the need to needle felt in front of the fire. Naturally, I expanded my repertoire to include Goldfinches, Chickadees, Cardinals and Bluebirds and this Christmas, I felted some birds for my tree. More and more, I find myself less and less attracted to the shine and shimmer of metalic bling on my Christmas Tree. I've taken to putting up the tree and leaving it naked for several days just to appreciate and welcome it's natural state...then I do the tiny colored lights. I like to leave it that way for a while before I put up the ornaments. I like the slow approach and find myself drawn more to the natural outdoorsyness of the tree than to my nostalgia for the ornaments. Funny how time changes what is important in the quiet recesses of the human heart. I love the feeling of putting the felted birds on the tree. They look real...small but natural. And I imagine myself the handmaid of Mother Nature herself...restoring the birds to their beloved conifer trees during the winter when so many are gone from the feeders. The birds are my friends. Their coming and going affects my spirits and they often arrive in my life at moments of syncronicity. One of the first and most obvious moments like that was years ago...in 1977 when my Grandmother had a stroke and was admitted to Salem Hospital where I was working in Mental health at the time. I was en route to visiting her in her hospital room as I made my way through an indoor tunnel that had great plate glass windows into an atrium garden area. I walked through that tunnel every day on my way to supper but on this particular day, my attention was grabbed by the presence of a dead Cedar Waxwing that had apparently hit the window hard enough to kill itself. At the very moment I spied the bird...I knew my grandmother was dying. Four days later she passed quietly in the night. Birds fly into my awareness and always bring a message of hope or affirmation that what is happening is part of nature. They sing like angels and make me want to sing. They live a life of faith using only what they need to birth their young and fledge them...to make flights of fancy on shapely winds...they spread seeds and joy wherever they go. What inspiration. I would like to do anything the way a bird sings...simply because they must. Since February is Heart month and Rose Breasted Grosbeaks have a habit of wearing their hearts on their breasts...I am celebrating the beauty and wild presence of the birds in my life this month. I heart birds. And now...on a breeze that lifts my spirits...the felted bird sculpures are finding their way to people and it is good good medicine for my heart. They are selling here and there and there is a deep satisfaction of soul...hopes that my hand made felt birds bring protective energies and joys to those who claim them. There is nothing quite like earning a wage from doing something you love and from sharing that love...especially when it is wild love that wants simply to be itself.