listening after dark

Gravity

The gist of it:
• I'm quitting my job at the end of the month (18 more days of work left...but shhh, because they don't know it yet...though I don't think anyone who reads this and knows where I work would tattle on me).
• At the beginning of September, I'm taking my car, computer and camera, and hitting the road for a couple of months to see the rest of the U.S. (I've only been to the western states and a very small portion of North Carolina) and some more of Canada.
• Then maybe I'll find where I want to live next. Or maybe I'll just find what I find.
• I fully plan on dropping in on anyone and everyone who wants to host a nomad for a day or two or more.

More details to come.

...

We should let ourselves be known
in our sleeping and waking, in that most human
of endeavors---the moment between night and day
when gravity binds us lightly to the earth.

Who are these people in my poems? Most times I do not know

Banquet
8-3-05

Table for one
Love these hours, the glow of them, the light they bring to your eyes.
You were born creating, you make your days in the way you know
best, carving into them with color and form, adding lines,
bending hours like bits of wire, a handful of pins.
Open the shutters, sweep the back steps, shift your weight
smoothly as you work. You’re standing taller now.
In just a few days you’ll feel at home
wherever you are. Just a few days more.

A steak knife
The church steeple is often the landmark that guides me
back to my front door after a long evening out finding people
shooting pool with strangers, the postman, a neighbor.
We find each other, we don’t talk much, just line up the shots.
Tonight I could have won, but she was watching
and I couldn’t see straight. The balls kept jumping out of pockets,
skidding and scudding in the worst way.
When I got home, Gloria knew I was drunk. She rolled over. I slept.

Bread and butter
Smoke always fills those windows around seven-thirty. The alarm goes off.
They must be awake. I can see the lights go on and off in each room.
He grinds the coffee, his special kind. She spends a long time at the sink.
Washing, she’s always washing. The black toast smell must be thick.
My balcony looks over their windows. I can see they have no children.
It is a pity I let my cat outside that one day. He never liked the rain.
Yellow finches would be at the bird feeder today, if there was one.
They never see me watching. The birds, the lovers.

© 2005 April K Szuch

Forget that it's Monday

Triptych
9-15-04

Moon
Wide enough grows the day,
small enough the evening becomes,
early enough comes morning, again,
with hair like a gypsy child---bathed
in a river, warmed by the sun---
standing in the reeds, where the shadows
are stripes of gold, blue, gold, blue, gold, naked,
eyes open wide enough.

Salt
Clasp these strands of hair, press them
in a locket, where they will not rust or shine.
What color were her eyes when she spoke to you?
Do not remember the words;
remember the eyes, fire-dark, like magma
from the center of the earth---transient,
fierce, volatile. Put a name to that color, make a name for that gaze
while you remember how she died.

Stone
There is nothing in sight. Nothing plus a flock of sheep---
I don’t think to count myself---still equals nothing.
He wanted to camp here and I wanted to travel
to Italy, where I’m sure all the olive trees
are hazy blue like in the French paintings. I trust art.
We compromised, I think. And we have the sheep
to contemplate. I should have brought my oils.
Watercolor cannot capture this shade, this edge
and depth of nothing. I paint anyway, at least
until dinner, when he teaches me the French word for light.

© 2004 April K Szuch

Full moon tonight

I know myself from every internal angle
and you know me from every angle external.

Singularity is what I pursue. It enthralls me,
draws me onward, wakes me each day,
with abrupt regularity, into being.

All the lives I'll never lead

A laugh can remind me of so much, even if I've never heard the laugh before.

...

I'm feeling melancholy this evening. I'm not sure why. The poems I've written lately have been different. People and books and music are influencing me. (As always, I suppose.)

I haven't been blogging much, but I don't suppose my "faithful readers" hate me for it. Because after all, I can write whatever I want here, however often (or seldom) I choose. A line and a half from a recent poem (that might show its face here, in time, when I feel able to relinquish it):

But you are silent, because I am telling the story. I am the one
with the pen.

...

Grief and pain are beautiful things to hold close when they are not my own. Even the antonyms to those, if they make me somber, are captivating. Other lines (from last year):

This song used to make me cry with intensity---
silent, rhythmic sobs. It was a bit of eternity
on the tongue of my mind; I could not hold it there
before it melted, iced sugar, into tears.
Beauty that made me cry. I reveled in it.

...

It's all about me. But it isn't.

I will be the rumpled bedsheets,
the stolen ivory, the discarded stage,
every voice from your dreams, all the apples
you ate as a child. You'd trade your lunch
for me. If you could traverse this wasteland
to discover what you want,
you would arrive where there are trees.

If it's this hard to keep track of my own one life, how hard must it be to give up this self-centeredness? I'm not sure I can, as a human. I'm too self-aware.

To explain, I turn to words. My own are not enough. Here are others:
• "O Taste and See"
• "The Summer Day" (the last half particularly)
• Nothing here, but I can't leave it at just two

...

I have this idea about poetry. Lately I write several word choices when the one doesn't come to mind. It helps me later, sometimes, when I look back and edit things (which I don't always do). I can cross off one choice, narrow it down, maybe add another. But I have this idea of having all the choices stay there, and show up in turn. For instance, if the poems were online, they would show up different each time someone went to that page. Not so very different, perhaps, but different enough to mean something. It would be like having a conversation with someone with Alzheimer's (I did this last week). The same topics keep coming up, with many of the same words, but each time the conversation can be nudged in a different direction.

...

Different directions. That's what I meant for this post to be about. I have one life, right? "One wild and precious life." Sometimes it doesn't seem like my life; too often I step back and examine all of this...and laugh.

I may not be doing all the things I should. I may be too withdrawn. I may be spending too much thought on things. But when it comes to it, I've got to do it this way, because it's mine. (Everyone figures this out, one way or another, at one time or another, and talks about it in some way...or another.)

...

Somehow I can write all this from within myself, set it out and just leave it here. I really don't understand this whole blogging thing, despite the fact that I've been doing it for a year and a half. But I like writing. I write. I'm a writer. So there you go. (That's probably the first "you" in this whole post. I, I, I.)

...

Something coming like morning
after too little sleep.
My eyes are dark under the lids
and my lashes cannot hide what I've missed,
what I haven't seen.

11 months old, not (yet) revised

Such As Dickinson?
8-22-04

I have lain so still
I could feel my pulse beneath my navel.
I have spent an hour
examining stones, an entire day

without speaking, never feeling silence
as a weight.
Sounds have been like insanity to me---
the same each time and as terrible,

a thousand beetles clicking in a dark box.
Dreams have been more real than life,
and the two cross over into each other,
and into fiction, and fiction into the two,

again. The past is as now, and things undone
have come again, and been the same
and utterly unlike. My eyes have burned
daily and into the night

and I have feared my heart
would cease to beat
softly under my breast, pumping blood
to these arid vessels.

© 2004 April K Szuch

A poem with one apostrophe

Watching It Rise
3-9-05

We have new beginnings all the time;
this is not one dark forever. There are glimpses of light beyond
this light---golden on the church
outside my window, golden on the maple
with its first red leaves
of spring, golden
on the calm air this morning, turbulent air
other mornings, other lifetimes.

I cannot imagine infinity.
A friend’s mother used to tell her it was everything
outside the margarine container we know
as time and space. We are lidded from it,
tucked into this plastic world where we make fake
butter and decorate the container
with a picture of a cow
anyway.

Yet there is light some mornings---evenings, even---
when sun and dawn and night are one, a trinity of shadow.
Driving at twilight is most dangerous, they say; it seems lighter
than it is, and deer come near the roads
on their way to green meadows and cool water,
as we are also on our way somewhere, speeding
by in our lidded containers, trying to propel ourselves
into infinity.

© 2005 April K Szuch

Banff, family, poems

Because I just tried to summarize my trip in an e-mail to a friend, and managed to write several hundred words about only the basics, I've decided to forgo sharing a lengthy account here. I'll be adding more images to my Banff photo album, as well as captions for all the photos (check back in a few days), so I hope that will tell the story, or at least the best parts of the story (though every part was the best).

In other news: My brother left this morning for Illinois, where he'll be starting his new job next week. (He arrived safely this evening and says the city reminds him of Spokane, near where we spent most of our childhood years.) And my grandpa is living with us (indefinitely?). And I'm still moving into my attic. So our house is in a state of uncommon change. I think I'm adjusting. The heat, however, is not as easy to adjust to. After the cool mountain climes, 80-plus degrees is a bit excessive.

And now, because it's been a while, a poem (or two):

________________________________________________________________

The Urn of Bitterness
5-11-05

You would like to believe the world is flung wide, a cape
to cover your dark shoulders, a net of velvet and lace.
You would like to step down from your posture of elegance.
Don’t stand so still. Your hands could warm the moon
if you could reach that far, if you could unhinge the sky
and push the sun back on the shelf.

It’s only a cupboard, this life, built to hold
a mug or two, a crystal bowl bought as a wedding gift.
The wedding was canceled. No one knows why,
and you couldn’t return the bowl.
You knew the store, the clerk. It’s a small town. People talk.

Today a child woke for the first time alone, in the sunshine.
His mother walked away. Just opened the door, stepped out
to test the weather, walked away. The street was empty but for cars
going by, people on their way to work, school, meetings.
Taking their grandfathers to the dentist.
Life goes on---the simplicity of it all---and she walked away.
This is the snapshot.

He will learn to play the piano. Not for skill, not for show,
but because it is there. His hand, the piano, time.
“Keep the rhythm,” she always said. “You cannot own a word,
but you don’t have to be a genius to move.
You don’t have to remember anything except your heartbeat,
your pulse, your breath. It changes, it stays the same.”

One day I’ll ink out a prayer that will last. One day I will collapse
into the world, finally myself. One day I will write true stories.
I should keep silent more often. I should let myself be still.
A hand to the wheel, a hand to the pen. No hand left
to tie up my hair, no hand left to paint my lips.

© 2005 April K Szuch

________________________________________________________________

Crabapples, or Nearing Daylight
5-28-05

Home among people and weather and things---
all my things, books, clothes, pictures, dust.
Could I not keep moving, ahead of the dust? I must
live somewhere, put down roots and build a home.
I want to leave again, take a book and camera,
drive away, walk away, linger in all those unknown places.

Nothing is ever finished: not my living, not this conversation,
nor the laughter, nor the waking hours, nor the darkness.
I am not content to let things remain incomplete,
yet completion is of the gods; perfection is not for me.
Let us speak more slowly, let us quiet our hands
and stop counting our steps.

My legs are half shaved, hair unwashed, glasses speckled
with dust, my companion of one week: 192 hours
is gone, these windows are full of winter’s grit
and I’ve brought more dust home than I can sweep away.
My mind is full of remembered smells
and I want to hear again the music our laughter made.

Some things soak in too deeply to be
anything but

© 2005 April K Szuch

Thinking of friends

I wrote this poem nearly two years ago, while thinking of a friend I'd been talking to almost daily for about a month. Away from home for a few days, I kept thinking of things to share with my friend.

I've since found (or noticed) that I often think of things I'd like to share with certain friends. Sometimes there's not time enough to say (or write) it all. Sometimes I think it might be enough that these friends are in my thoughts. But I know that sometimes they need to know how much I think of them.

This is for all those friends I think of often, and for all the ones who still come to mind after years of separation.

Dear Friend
6-16-03

How is it that my mind can wander
yet always be reminded of you---

little things pointing me
in your direction. I want to tell you
what I saw today: sunlight

tilted across the field, illuminating
every dust particle and insect.

All the flaws were beautiful.

I want to remember what I thought
yesterday, and that dream I had
last night---was it in color? I want
to tell you before I forget, I want you to

remember for me. I want to tell you
about the deer in the field, the flat tire,
the fire, the mosquitoes and the rain.

I want to tell you about my bad moods,
my loss of humor, my pain.
I am not always irresistible;

I wonder how you put up with me;
I wonder why we are friends.
You must have things to tell me too.

© 2003 April K Szuch

It's the small details of life I usually want to share. The bugs, the rain, the child I saw on the way to work who made me laugh. The words that come to mind to describe something or other.

Things like this, of today:

...watching a cloud erase itself from the sky,
frost on a morning windowpane,
ice on a spring pond

This week

My working hours have gone by quickly, and my nonworking hours have been spent finishing up knitting and beading projects for the sale on Saturday (a fund raiser/rummage sale with "eclectic items" and other things). I just finished making some more earrings and then pricing all my earrings and knit purses. If I sell a good number of the nine purses and 33 pairs of earrings, I should make a nice little bit of extra cash. This is my first attempt at selling any of my creations, even though I've been making stuff since I was in my early teens. Anyway, I'm excited to see what will transpire.

Since I've been sitting around in my room, crafting, I've been listening to a lot of music: mostly Pink Floyd, North Mississippi Allstars and, of course, Deb Talan (see the "Listening" list at right). I found the first two CDs at the library this week, and I'm thoroughly enjoying them. I find it surprising that I never really listened to Pink Floyd before. (My dad is proud that I'm expanding my horizons to include classic 70s music. If I start playing Fleetwood Mac, he might really go crazy with the air guitar...but he listens to enough of that on his own.)

While my hands are busy, I find myself thinking about a lot of various things. It's been a nice interlude (although I've been staying up too late and worry that I won't have enough for the sale). I usually find myself in the mode of "If I think about something interesting or at all deep, I have to write about it, either in a poem, in my journal or on my blog," but this week I've been letting most of the thoughts pass through my mind. I've enjoyed them and then let them go. It's not always easy, but it's necessary. If I turn everything outward, I'll become a jumbled mess of introversion gone wrong.

I know I've mentioned her many times before, but Deb Talan's lyrics never cease to captivate me. Many of her lines run through my mind at all hours. This morning I woke up (from a strange dream) with one of her songs in my head. I don't remember which one it was, but these lines often find their way into the conscious portion of my mind:

Our heads say hold back, but our hearts run to strangers and say, "Look at me, look at me, look at me..."

(She has good grammar, too; her lyrics are all printed out nicely, with proper spelling, capitalization and punctuation. I like that.)

Those lines are from a song about love, of course, but I can connect them to any number of situations. We all want to be noticed. There's that thing called pride, and that Christian virtue called humility that we're supposed to possess (without knowing we possess it, of course), as well as the meek spirit for which women especially are praised. But sometimes we just want to run up, childlike, and get someone's attention.