God, what will you do with cities?

Leave the dirt.
In it grows
our only hope
to live again.

Pavements crack.
Buildings fall.
Rain and wind
shall do their work.

Have no fear
of all we build;
even evil
will have its day—

invasive weed
soon stripped away—
trees shall grow in its place.

---

I walk through this brown city, and think how lovely it could be if only we would leave it alone to grow some green. If only we would leave the dirt to build up on the sidewalks, filling up crevices: little greens would shoot up, and slowly tear the asphalt apart. In a few years, the city would be unidentifiable, and we would have a real place to live. 

Forgive me. I know I can't have it both ways. It's just, we seem to ruin all we touch; instead of guiding and stewarding the earth, we try to conquer it, as if we hate it instead of loving it. 

All cities do not have to be "a paralysis" a la James Joyce. Moroccan designers, builders, craftspeople, rich people, green-loving humans with souls who haven't known peace: BUILD US A PARK IN CASABLANCA.

Free Write Notebook

In my writing class, I require 10 minutes of most days be devoted to free writing. I try to participate in this time, as well. After 2.2 years of teaching this class, I have finally completed my first free write notebook, filled with prompts and my own responses. I'll be mining it and posting my favorite entries with the label "notebook." Especially if you're a writing teacher, find the prompts I use highlighted at the top of notebook posts.

Here is one:

Prompt: Respond to "Fog" by Carl Sandburg. How have you experienced nature recently?

The rain fell like it does: indifferently.
The streams rose and rose.
Falling asleep under down I heard
each passing car play its lullaby of tires,
water, road.

In our small tent, I woke up to the crashes of thunder. At first, they had not mattered. They were just background rhythms in my dreams. But then, we were all awake. Angela looked about; I could see her fright in the lightning flashes. And, for no good reason, this was hilariously funny to me. I began to laugh hard. We had to decide whether we would remain in the tent, dry, but perhaps electrocuted, or retreat to the car, getting soaked, but staying whole, and with less danger of trees crashing on our canvas-covered heads.

I stopped laughing when I was shivering in the car, unable to sleep.

Time Passing Under the Siamese, Silly-Leaf Tree*

By my part of the stream in a corner of the park, the new summer breeze draws its silk cape over my bare arms.
Who knows what may come or go?
But may God receive praise for it all.
For this moment: the grass bits on this paper, the sap from that old tree: knowing that life probably goes on.
For the last moment: when I saw the soft heart of someone for whom I'd given up hope.
And for the next moment: when life will continue or end at Your pleasure.
Be praised, Great God.

Ant biting my ankle.
Two mallards swimming by.
A groundhog, honestly, nibbling at leaves above its head, exposing its soft belly.
A branch creaking in the wind, like a strange bird or a rusty door,
and, naturally, two heavy-footed humans scare the groundhog away, and the breeze stops,
as does the rusty door-branch. The mallards are past now.
The stream is still flowing, at least.

---

*I believe we've talked about how I don't know the names of things in nature. This is a tree whose trunk splits very low, creating two, and whose leaves look like mittens and high-five hands.

How to Remove a Cricket from the Shower

One day, upon first stepping into the shower, you may notice a struggling cricket of, say, two inches diameter, making it unquestionably the largest cricket you have ever seen in your life. After identifying it as such, you may choose to loose a shriek or some other rapid exhalation before finding a towel and staggering out of the bathroom to think through the situation. Follow these steps:

1. Put on a robe or something. Tackling any insect in the buff is leaving yourself unnecessarily vulnerable.

2. Locate a window or door that opens to the outdoors. You may not enjoy sharing your shower with a cricket, but that's no reason to end his abnormally large life.

3. Find an object that is long enough to cradle the insect without using your hands to touch it. Perhaps this goes without saying, but because the insect entered your life with no warning, you are not mentally prepared to grasp it with your bare hands.
Recommendations: A magazine might work, but the best possible solution here is a toilet brush and its container. The toilet brush can serve as an extended hand to "coax" the creature into the container.

4. Wrangle the cricket.

5. Transport it to the nearest window or door, arms fully extended so as to prevent contact with the cricket.

6. Open window and dump the cricket.

7. Resume shower, now with a sense of the unexpected and the ridiculous that prevails in you, even after so many years of claiming to not be afraid of bugs.

Also, this:

General Education: Bird Watching

From my vantage point in the dorm office, I can see only a sliver of the front porch. Entirely filling that sliver is a square, brick column supporting the porch roof. This column also supports a large bird's nest. So far this spring, two bird families have made their homes there, first building up the tenement, then laying eggs, and incubating them.

I find myself often observing these creatures who seem to subsist so much simpler than I. Most recently was the robin family. What a cure to watch mama bird fly off, leaving the kids in silence, to snuggle and shove each other until she returned, bringing back worms and berries in her expert beak. Her squeaky, squirmy babies arched their necks and got excited. She had to make many trips to scrounge food for her hungry troop. And never did I hear her complain. Every time she returned to the nest, I wanted to applaud, so cheerfully did she extend her prizes for her young to devour. They might have applauded, too, if they were older and wiser and had hands.

Good job, mother robin! Yesterday the birdies flew off: graduation! 

_____________________________________________________________________

I wish I could take a class whose only objectives were the following:

1. careful and reverent observation

2. honest prayer

3. quiet introspection
4. further observation

I believe bird watching (executed slowly and alone) should be a required part of a liberal arts education. Because in order for it to be effective for people like me (whoever we are), it must be forced. My view must be limited to only a sliver of the porch where the bird families are perfectly framed and perfectly close enough for observation.

For other ideas for a liberal arts education, John Updike's "Hoeing" comes to mind. Perhaps all these ideas could be rolled into one required class that I am supremely unqualified to teach. For a few days, we watch birds. Another few days, we hoe a field. Another day, we make mud puddles and play in them. Another day, we learn to beat water as if it were a drum. Another day, we bake pies. It would be called "Explorations in Bio-Purpose."

William and Dorothy were Brother and Sister, so it's like that

Dear *******,

You will always be the William to my Dorothy Wordsworth. I guess some people are simply meant to write together. I will be the prose. You can make sense of the metrics. I will look at the mist and give you a detailed description of the fauna; and you can become famous after making nature accessible and beautiful for those who will still bother to pick up books.

When Cat Fell Out of the World

Cat sat at the window inside the world. She looked at the picture that changed.

But today the screen was up. Cat was suddenly out of the world! The ground smelled like living bugs. The air was achingly close, in her fur, through her whiskers.

The neighbor's calls and sirens and carhorns could touch her pricked ears! Her tail dipped and touched the grasses moved by the wind. She crunched leaves under her paws.

Cat gave a cry. She missed sitting under the table and dodging moving legs in the world.

Notebook Exploration

These are from fall of 2007, my one semester at Houghton College.

I found this haiku in the front of my notebook for advanced composition with Dr. Susan Bruxvoort Lipscomb:

If at first you

Can't count to five syllables,

You're probably me.

I found this letter to God in the back of my notebook for English literature survey with Dr. Wardwell. That was the best class I have ever taken. During finals, I was pacing the lengths of the bookshelves memorizing slices of poetry and their authors. When I wrote this letter, I had just taken a long look at Gulliver's Travels and was about to move on to The Rape of the Lock. But my mind stopped. So I began:

I want to tell You all about it by a shimmering stream, beneath a cerulean sky. But I have a light brown study carrel with a light that hums next to a window and a heater. And I have a very serious amount of studying to do for my final in two days. But, God, I'm just so SO--! I want to tell You under a starry sky, with the world beneath You and I together. We'd watch each star as it watched us, and You'd tell me a secret and I would make You laugh.

But I have a hundred (or two dozen) goodbyes to make. And who knows for how long it will be? One year? This lifetime? All eternity? Jesus only You could know... I'm just so--! So mad and clueless, expectant and helpless. So scared and tired, excited and weary. And not busy. Like I should be.

Even though I walk the shores, all the mountains, town after town, one city, then another, even though I see Your creation right beside all that of man, I will always listen for Your voice. It always calls me here. To begin again at the beginning, while I'm in the middle of everything busy, getting ready to make a change. I'll start with You. And I'll end with You.

Weekend Continues

Last weekend was so packed that it merits three separate posts. Steve and Meg and I left Lancaster with our packed lunches and some non-specific directions. The day's goals: Longwood Gardens and the Brandywine River Museum. The day was windy, and clouds moved quickly in large mounds across the sun. We wanted to see everything. We started with the outer perimeter of brand new treehouses and the hourglass lake where catfish swarmed from under the bridge to gulp at the tulip petals I dropped. Those hideous beasts. If they were any bigger, I am sure I would have felt some fear.

We visited the DuPont house where a very large kitty was reclining on some cacti. Visitor after visitor stooped and petted her; the only indication that she was still alive was the rhythmic rise and fall of her massive belly.

We passed through the tulip beds: squares of the densest tulip patches humans can manage. A block of bright orange, a block of streaked yellow and red with fringes like leather jackets; a block of sedate and orderly small-headed purple; a block of magenta; light pink; large white-petalled towers over tiny violas.

At the far end of the tulips, a cat slept on a bench near a sign which told us of the important role the cats play in the garden: they catch rodents in exchange for (a seemingly endless supply of) food, shelter, and more loving tourists than Cinderella at Disney World.

We traveled into the trees near the belltower. A limby North African tree stood at the bottom of the hill near the Magnolias lining the road. Oh, that tree needed a friend. Sometimes fathers will build jungle gyms in their back yards so their kids can climb all around and see the world from a thousand different angles and turn upside down and look up into the sky. God built this one. I climbed high up into it. There were no signs. I am pretty sure I'm insured.

Our legs were getting tired. We could use a rest. We passed through a side door in the wall of apple trees at the edge of the vegetable gardens and found three chairs around a little garden table. I half expected wood elves to come serve us cider and honey wafers to restore our energies. After a brief respite, we turned the corner out of the alcove to find that we were right back in the action of the gardens.

We went into the conservatory where we experienced the perfume exhibit. Wow.

As we walked down from the bonsai room, there was Kelly Neibert. Just walking along alone. "Kelly!" I thought. But in reality, I just stared into her face as intensely as possible, so she would be sure to notice the stranger to her right. We talked precious little. She was busy. We were leaving.

We braved the long lines at the gift shop to buy Aida a mini gardening set, and an African violet for my aunt. The Brandywine River Museum was closing when we arrived. We went to a Thai Restaurant and loved it. We were tired. We rested in my living room where I watched and they made fun of the new Twilight movie, New Moon. Really, Twilight, guys? Yes, really. When we see the next one (and we will!), we plan on muting it and adding our own dialogue. You're invited to come see the magic.

Everything Natural

I have a hole in my vocabulary: I don't know how to describe landscape. It may be the result of a lack of nature reading. But I am more prone to believe that it comes from a lack of nature. What is a rill? A hummock? What exactly is an escarpment? It sounds like a place where fish might be bred. It gets worse when we're talking about specific types of herbage. As I read James Herriott, a Scottish author, I found myself at a blank when I tried to imagine his environment. I finally gave in and web-searched what peat moss and heather looked like.

My vocabulary hole is even more apparent when I try to write about my environs. I don't even know the name of the tree outside my window. In the summer, its greenery is vibrant enough to obstruct intrusive eyes. In the wintertime, said tree drops its leaves onto our porch from which they are swept into the road to be removed by the street cleaners (which I never see, but know exist, because they are religious about ticketing vehicles). Even after discarding its leaves, long green pods remain on the branches. Throughout the winter, these pods become more and more translucent, revealing small black seeds inside, which obligingly take up the office of the leaves and scatter themselves about our porch, to be swept into the road and then removed by the unseen, yet fastidious, street cleaners. Through my long and fervent commerce with this tree, I have yet to learn its name, or any of its virtues as a plant. As a city-dweller, it merely gets in my way; much like the tree a few houses down which excretes a sap that smells like vomit, and has accordingly been dubbed the vomit tree.

I'm out of touch, you see.
I don't know nature,
and she doesn't know me.
I haven't felt the earth with
my bare, soft feet
in I-don't-know-how-long!
...It may be getting to me.

I remember living in smaller towns growing up. I wasn't so far removed then. I could hike in the woods, and did often. I knew the smaller parks and hiking trails nearby with an almost shameful intimacy. I didn't often feel hungry or tired there. Sometimes, it was a marvel how deeply I lost myself in sunlight and trees. I wanted to be a part of them. Some force would pull me off the trail, to know the outside of the trail, and maybe actually know it... nature, something. Once off the trail, my desire would only grow. There was more, where was it? Knowing tree names wasn't enough, I had to be a part of it, get inside. I would climb a tree, or stoop to the mosses, inspecting the insides of logs. But that tugging does not just go away. Sometimes, in fact, my dissatisfaction rose to anger.

Not long ago, I was visiting Longwood Gardens with my grandparents. While there, I compared it to my first time to Longwood, ten years ago. I had felt that dissatisfied longing to be in nature. I remember how awful it was to be in such an achingly beautiful place, and somehow not really know it. But something was different this trip. As I walked through the conservatory, I felt like singing to God! I felt as though I had to worship and adore the Creator, or I would burst all over the lovely orchids. I smiled dumbly, room after room of incredible colors, each representing a vast framework of design. The longing was still there, but smaller. As I thanked God in prayer for His unrestrained, immoderate beauty, I knew that I was a part of it.

Gardens and Grandparents

Now and then, the alarm clock and I are friends. On Thursday, at six am, I truly appreciated it. I quickly dressed and added a few items to my backpack. I gulped a glass of water then reached for my keys, closing the door quietly and facing the freezing air of morning. Thin snowflakes whipped about my heavy head as I turned toward the train station, taking the route down James, then Queen street to stay in the streetlights. [Hmm, streetlights: do they give one company, or make a lonely walk even lonelier merely by their contrast at the very moments when one might have accustomed herself to the darkness?]

The train station was lit with high chandeliers and in motion with commuters and a few droopy-eyed travelers like myself. On the train, I began to focus on my book, but I put it down in short time, noticing that the east was brightening ever so slightly. Around me, professional people picked up binders and pens and text messages beeped.

We reached the Downingtown station. I was the only one to get off, while a dozen alighted to take my place. I saw Grandma and Grandpa, snugly wrapped to ward off the windy morning. The sky was fully awake now.

We talked and laughed at our breakfast in their sunny kitchen, anticipating our day together. Grandma politely asked if Grandpa wouldn't mind her driving to Longwood, for we both knew he would get confused, and she would be reminding him of our destination the whole time. He consented with a humorous grace and opened her door for her, as he has done for the past 52 years.

My stomach full, and the sun in my eyes, I fought sleep as we wound around a few back roads to reach the gardens. We entered Longwood with few other visitors. We had the gardens to ourselves so early on a weekday, and we explored the treehouses and hiked around the back ways toward the pond. I resisted the urge to run toward the meadow to the left. A green pathway extended far off the road over a rill and into a grove of firs. The walk would have worn out my companions unnecessarily, and we decided on an early lunch at the Terrace cafe.

We stayed over an hour at lunch, talking about the most important things: baptism, the Holy Spirit, family, coffee, teaching, hospitality. It turns out my grandparents know a thing or two about what makes guests comfortable, and I was glad to learn from them by experience. My grandmother once took a class on flower arrangement, and ever since has created a centerpiece for the table when hosting, giving it as a favor to her guests.

I had almost forgotten that we had yet to visit the Conservatory. It was all the more spectacular because I had not been expecting it! We passed through walks of dapper cyclamen, poinsettias arranged around decorated Christmas trees, one of which had a thousand electric-blue butterflies, slowly flapping their wings! I explored the children's labyrinth of fountains. We entered the orchid room... if only I could tell you! Then the palm room, which they maintain at a balmy 80 degrees. It was the first time I'd been that kind of warm in months! I wanted to remain in the very midst of it all, clinging to a large palm leaf and drop into the center of the rainforest below the walkway. But Grandma moved us on at a stunning pace for a woman of 75 years. On and on we went, room after room of sunlight and green and moisture. We whipped through the desert room, always my favorite, and took seats in the rose room. It was there where I finally realized how much I missed summertime, and how rejuvenated I felt.

Spring is not so far away, after all. We passed a Magnolia tree with buds.

Back at home, we played cards and talked about the news. Grandma always has stories to tell me about both sides of my family, for she was good friends with my father's family, as well. I listened. Then we sat down at the piano and we sang until my voice went hoarse. I'm still not recovered.

I was refreshed. Their slower, steadier burn of energy renewed my spirits. I felt what some people feel their whole lives and never know it: belonging. This is a place where I find pictures of myself through the years on their walls. This is a place where we talk, and we both have a right to say whatever will benefit the other. When I return with them to the gardens in the spring, I'll bound up that hill in the meadow, nothing can possibly stop me.

Rejected Civility

When you come off of the subway
off of the tube
Do you wish for a natural disaster?
Something to break through?

For ears that hear engines grinding and buzzing,
never branches, never bees.
For skin that feels metal gripping, rubber turning,
never treebark, never seas.

Begone, you heathen senses! You do not know your Maker!
We may yet return to our mother's bosom.
Else clouds shall whip and wail
And break through the skyscraping prison bars
to finally touch our longlost faces.

_______________________________

We call it "shelter" where we live, and "fast" how we get there.
Was the earth ever so inhospitable as all that?
The wild is not so savage as we would like to think,
Unless it be from rejected civility:
Going in the back door to rob the house
which we may have lived in.