grace – Page 3 – Grace Write Here

Release

October 24, 2013October 24, 2013 Norissa2 Comments

A poem is never finished, only abandoned.
Paul Valery, French critic & poet (1871 – 1945)

I prefer to think of it as releasing, as opposed to abandoning. And just as with parenting, writing is a series of releases, with the understanding that we’re never completely finished. Where writing is concerned, I love revision–re-seeing–and, being a detail-oriented person, I could fine-tune forever. (This is one of my challenges with blogging–just getting something out there, even–especially–when it isn’t as polished as I would like.) And I hope that with my parenting, as with any aspect of my life, I will always be fine-tuning myself, adjusting for the better.

Release

Poems, like children, will expose
you, lay you bare
in intimate vulnerability,
and for a few moments
that comprise an eternity
you won’t care
who sees.
Held inside,
gestating for weeks of days
till the body can’t hold them
anymore, and they come
barreling out so perfect-turned
you can’t believe
you had anything at all
to do with it.
You must tend
with intention, but if you try
to control them too much
they rebel or fall
flat. They’ll frustrate, even scare
you sometimes, mirror
and shine you just a little
too vividly for your own
comfort. You can hold them
in your heart, repeat
and turn their names, their words,
over in your mouth,
savoring the growth
and discovery.
But once they are out
there, in the world,
they live their own lives,
a future, you hope, beyond
your own.

Peace

October 15, 2013October 18, 2013 Norissa4 Comments

Sea Change

My son is all squall and blast,
howling at the pancakes
on the table, and I am rage
rather than compassion
for his tired state. I slam
the plate and leave, but
there’s no abandoning
ship when you are the storm.
I thunder the hallway and throw
a defiant demand at the ceiling, God
help me!
I expect
nothing.
But then, just as sudden
as the gale had rolled in,
Grace.
A change
in the climate,
a softening and calm
as though the swells
surging between
my shoulders just
dropped.
Peace,
be still, spoken over the torrents
and tangle of waves.
My son sniffs and relaxes,
starts to eat, and I
breathe.

Several weeks ago, we escaped to a nearby lake for a few hours. It was mostly peaceful, cooler and grayer than we usually get around here, and plenty of fresh air for breathing deep.

Joy in the Desert

September 21, 2013 NorissaLeave a comment

Rain is always a gift here in the desert. I hope I will never complain about rain again after having experienced droughts regularly lasting most of a year. We had four days of rain in row last week–and I don’t mean the kind of sudden dumping of buckets of rain that lasts 15 minutes and is gone, the hallmark of monsoon season in the desert. These were gray days filled with oceans of clouds and rain lasting most of the day. It was very strange and wonderful. My favorite kind of day.

Where I lived in Michigan, rain smelled of worms–an earthy, fermented, sweet-gone-sour– a warning to anyone thinking of walking barefoot in the rain to watch where you placed your foot.

Rain in the desert, though? The epitome of fresh– cleanly sweet, as though the rain were falling for the very first time. It washes the dust out of the air, pulls the heat from the xeriscaped yard, shimmers down the windows, bounces the rock walls and slicks the streets. We never think to do a rain dance in all the dry weeks beforehand, only after it comes, as celebration. I can’t help clapping and exclaiming with the kids, “Look! Rain!”

But there’s always a part of me that slips out of the moment, either to lament the inevitable return of arid days or simply to be discontent and wish the rain would last for a week. I don’t fully inhabit this joy, relaxing into the moment, the way my children know how to.

They know how to receive, how to let the gift fall into their hands. They naturally look up, thankful. They seem to intuit that every good and perfect gift comes from above, and accept such grace with unbounded pleasure and delight.

Photography as meditation

September 6, 2013 Norissa1 Comment

The camera has given me a new way to see, even as I close one eye and narrow my vision to that which fits in the viewfinder: an opportunity to focus on the small, the unobtrusive in my life. My eyes rest on a still life they’ve glanced over a hundred times. I experiment with holding my breath to steady my hands. Inhale, click, exhale. Inhale, exhale, click.

As a novice, I have to slow down, observe the light quality and any shadows, focus the lens with attention, consider how I want to frame the image. This is not second nature, and it’s an opportunity to be patient, first of all with myself.

It’s helping me notice the small graces of the imperfectly folded stack of clean dish cloths my four-year-old offered, a mother dove nested safely in our palm tree, the sunlight blooming in my baby’s hair, wild curls that mimic mine, their wonder at watching street construction.

The everyday extraordinary.

This is grace: there is no need to perform, just the gift of eyes being opened to see and give thanks.

Writer as Paleontologist

August 20, 2013 Norissa1 Comment

Sometimes I am frustrated with this season of life, when it’s so difficult to carve out time for writing. I miss being able to spend whole mornings, entire days, working on a poem or essay. Losing myself in tinkering with a single line, meditating on the merits of this word over that word.

The high of head-down, charging-forward, steady, focused, creative work.

Life with little ones feels a series of continuous interruptions: broken sleep, spilt-milk meltdowns, fractured conversations, abandoned shopping carts.

In this season of constant interruption, I’m trying to accept that there is little time for the deep digging, extended times of creativity (and as long as I’m still experiencing sleep deprivation, setting my alarm for 5 a.m. to have time to myself is just not going to happen). I want to embrace this time of unexpected discovery.

I’m marking the places I trip

over, the places something rare

and fascinating juts out of the sands

of my life, taking note and aching

for a chance to come back

later and dig. Then

I will carefully mine

the sediment for more

bones, steady chipping,

brushing,

seeking,

hoping for a frame

to emerge.

Tedious work, sometimes, but once pieced together, it gives me the chance to do the fun, creative part of fleshing it out, really playing what if with the shape, the contours, colors, and textures.

For now, I’m working on learning to excavate in smaller increments, on viewing a few moments of digging as worthwhile, on enjoying even five minutes of focusing on a line, a word, an image, on abandoning complete for work-in-progress (and isn’t that what we all are, anyway?) On noticing.

But mostly, I’m working on trust– trust that this daily collecting of shards and bones will one day come together into something that, if not perfectly whole, will be beautiful.

*Songwriter Sara Groves was the first person I heard liken her writing process to an archaeological dig.