everything stinks

it stinks mom,

my daughter kept saying, i would reply,

welcome to new york, everything stinks.

and by the grins and chuckles i heard from passers by, i probably wasn't too far off the mark.

standing at the subway station, looking at the black muck on the walls and ceilings, i thought, there is really no way for them to ever get this clean. Lord knows what you get in your lungs down here breathing.

a friend i met recently told me, he went to the doctor and got an xray. his lungs look like a smoker's. the doctor asked,

do you smoke?

no, never.

he replied.

do you live in the city?

yes,

he said.

ah, city lungs.

that they have a name for it, should not surprize anyone. but that it is as bad or worse than a heavy smoker is pretty tragic. considering how many people out there must be huffing and puffing around town with citylungs. i try not to think of this as i watch the half hour buffer for us to get to the museum from penn station tick away.

we are joined on the platform by a young tattooed couple. she was shapely, not overmuch, not artificially, but healthfully. he was strong and wise. his arms had all kinds of designs, sleeves, as they are called, but i didn't want to stare. that's the thing, i get so interested in observing people i act like i'm at the zoo and they are in cages.

so our train finally, finally arrives. we had to catch the E train downtown headed toward the world trade center. where the young couple were headed. we needed to get off a stop earlier, at spring street.

i found a map, got my bearings, and got off at the right exit. they followed. the conductor stuck his head out the window and said,

catch the next E train

as he pulled away. they shouldn'ta got off but they followed me. and we were running late so i couldn't stay to apologize. i felt terrible.

we walked an entire city block to varick and couldn't figure out where we needed to be. so the person we ask says,

i have no idea.

(which at least she didn't just give us some random directions).

so we literally run back to the subway and find spring street (which was my first mistake, not finding the street we needed to begin with), turns out, we ran around 3 sides of that city block and across two streets to the location. we were wiped when we got there. both of us huffing and puffing, you know, i'm no runner. my kid even less.

the tour had begun, but apparently we didn't miss much. we were at the nyc fire museum and they had a faces of ground zero exhibit going on. my beloved and i had agreed telling our girl about 9/11 before going into town was not the best idea, since she was so young when it happened, and we hadn't enlightened her since.

but on the train that morning from jersey i said,

now baby, there may be some words you don't understand. twin towers, 9/11, 343. i'll explain those to you later.

she looks at me with her precious innocence,

i know about september 11.

really?

i said,

where did you find out?

now this is always a precarious time when questioning children and reporters. will they reveal their sources? so i tried to keep the tone jovial.

tell me baby, i'd like to know.

my friends told me last week.

really, what did they say?

she told me they told her one building fell into the other and they both fell down.

i explained the whole situation to her. everything. i told her where she was, where we were, all that happened, and why we didn't tell her.

she said,

i wasn't going to tell you because i didn't think you knew.

ah!

i said,

you can tell us anything. and you'll be surprized by what we know.

we also talked about pearl harbor. and she was asking questions but i could only provide spotty info. so i said,

we'll have to read up on it.

meanwhile, we're headed into the big city and i'm trying not to scare the kid.

we read all the placards on the ten foot (if not larger) photos of the faces of ground zero and she was very sad. but it was a good experience.

so we're at this park with the homeschoolers, and hear an explosion. silence and then the glass of the windows rumble.

we all jumped. the moms in the park who were clearly from the area, said,

don't worry. it's nothing. construction. they demolished a building.

but that was not where i wanted to be any longer. it was freaky. and we'd just come from the museum. i was talking to a lady there who said,

that was not okay, just having that noise and the moment of uncertainty.

she told me she doesn't watch the news anymore (since 9/11, she lives in the city), or read the paper, or ever look at the cover of the times. her daughter was one year old when it all happened and she hadn't told her either. (which made me feel a bit better) but i really hadn't thought about living in the shadow of it. wow.

my dear female minister friend told me she went out into the community and reassured people. she is a very reassuring presence. but i can't imagine what it was like actually living through it. she lived in queens then.

more later, i must away. peace.

peeled grapes

went to a poetry reading for the matriarch yesterday. she read for about an hour. it was great. i'd not heard her for such a concentrated length of time and i see why she is so well received. one of the things she said was,

i tell my students if they are going to write, to be like peeled grapes.

i've never been too far from that ideal, so i am encouraged.

when i walked into the venue, i didn't say hello. i just took a seat. got out my map to chart my way home, it was in south brunswick, an hour and a half drive down. then, parked myself in a chair and awaited her arrival.

hey, suz!

she said, with a big smile when she entered the room.

i can't tell you how comforting that is to hear. someone entered during the reading and sat behind me, leaning close and whispered something in my ear. i told her to come and sit beside me.

my husband has this habit of standing behind me and talking. he did it when we met, he still does it today. it kind of vexes me, because i can't see whom i'm talking to.

so this sweet girl sat beside me and suddenly i have absolutely nothing to say. silence takes over.

they opened the mic after the matriarch, but nobody wants to read after the matriarch, so i did. i had a poem i wanted her to hear. i said,

[the matriarch] told me to stop hiding behind metaphor,

so i wanted her to hear this.

and when i was done, she hugged me and said,

you did it honey.

i was thrilled. and the sweet girl beside me took the mic and performed a lovely spoken word piece.

i introduced myself to the organizer after and said,

poet introductions before you hear the work, don't mean much.

and the talk turned to dodge. the sweet girl returned and we hit it off, planning to hook up at dodge and get to know each other.

suddenly, i'm not feeling so lost. seeing the matriarch reminds me of everything i want to be. she is an academic, but doesn't agree with the intellectual disjointed incoherent poetry they made fashionable.

i told her, it is so nice to hear someone accomplished not telling young poets, be like me. be like me. she says constantly,

root your work to actual things. write of your experience.

i spent more time laughing yesterday than i had in a great while. see, i can be ungrim. i just have to be around the right crowd. this is my crowd.

the organizer of the event asked if i am published, and i said,

i don't.

he said,

you should.

and we talked about it a bit.

who knows what God will do kids. who knows.

an army of five

so we got more milkweed but had a stowaway and another hitchhiker on the underside of the leaves. we named one stowaway, the other, sir drops a lot. (this was suggested as a nickname for half-leaf, but he all ready has a name, so it was agreed upon to dub the little bitty one we just acquired sir drops a lot).

i moved the whole army of caterpillars outside so i didn't have to infest the house with aphids, which were all over the plant we had just acquired.

the thing about half-leaf is, he straddles the atlantic seaboard. mr. picky used to stand upsidedown under a leaf. half-leaf tends to mount his meal. he starts somewhere around maine, and works his way down through new york, over into pennsylvania, down through the carolinas, all the way to florida and across to the ole miss.

he would then move to the pacific, eat his way through washington, oregon, and idaho, devouring the dakotas and ole miss all the way down to the gulf of mexico. very systematic.

yesterday was his roaming day. he was trying to find a place to pupate. so i kept putting him where i wanted him to be. (when i first saw him in the morning he was still on the roof of the mesh enclosure i had around the plants, a collapsable hamper, actually) none of them were moving and i thought he was going to pupate right then. until i realised it was too cold. so i put them in the sun, and half-leaf zipped around like he was turbo charged after that.

ultimately i had my way, he got still and settled on the underside of a leaf, last night around 8 i went down and he had dropped into the tell tale j

stowaway and littlebit molted, dropping tiny casings of chitin. and their little faces remained yellow for about a minute or two until the black stripes came in.

sir drops a lot's whereabouts are unknown.

i will likely spend much time today checking in on the progress of half-leaf. watching him squirm out of his mortal coil.

mr. picky's wings are developing nicely. you can see them taking shape through the gentle green walls of the pupa.

what i thought was a yellow stripe is actually tiny yellow dots, which do look more like gold than yellow. and i've come to discover pupa in latin means gold.

such terrible wonders abound. yesterday was a good day indeed.

half-leaf and little bit

when we get things we tend to get them in three sizes. daddy, momba, and renee sized. so mr. picky is in a chrysalis now. and his two compatriots, half-leaf, who has a curious habit of eating one half leaf at a time, right down to the vein. and little bit who is tiny and still making little holes in the leaves. they do this until they get larger.

mr. picky used to flag the leaves to stop the flow of milk. eating just enough of the stem to bend the leaf down and stop the flow to eat the entire leaf from the underside right across the vein.

tuesday afternoon, mr. picky was still hanging like a j, but moving his mouth like a newborn wanting milk. i returned later, to find him completely green and his skin nearly sloughed off. he was squirming around like he was trying to get in (or out) of a girdle. ever tried to put one of those things on ladies? this little guy dropped off his outer skin and antennae and was left a long green sour apple jelly bean looking specimen.

inside the pupa, he continued to undulate and girate. like he had a hoola hoop in there. the pupa twisted many, many times on that tiny silken string and it elongated and retracted, ultimately becoming a standard pupa. it got yellow dots and a yellow horizontal stripe on it which my girl said looked like gold.

half-leaf, meanwhile is defoliating everything he can. he is huge, probably twice as big as mr. picky was when he chrysalized (or pupated is the right term, i think).

little bit was the size of a half-inch of angel hair pasta (for not liking to talk about food, i sure use it a lot in my descriptions, eh?). now, he has doubled in size and looks to consume all the remaining food today.

we must get more.

i awoke this morning and was shocked. the chrysalis hangs on a stripped bare stem which has been eaten around entirely. everything above is gone. they moved on to the next leaf. there must be some unspoken code amongst caterpillars, don't dislodge the chrysalis of others (or do unto others as you'd have them do unto you). imagine that.

so the feast continues. the search for food begins in earnest. and we wait wondrous transformation, the emergence. the rebirth. from death to life. though mr. picky hasn't died, he is no longer mr. picky. he will become what he was meant to become. something glorious that will waft away upon the breezes.

and i for one, can't wait to see it. i'm told by my girl it takes 9 to 15 days. won't be long kids. won't be long.

peace.

dangling

so i spent the day retrieving mr. fussy eater. i realized, last thing i needed was another particular eater in the house. but i got three now.

yesterday my beloved and girl got more milkweed.

the first time i found him he was on the wall, crawling up to my johnny depp poster. i would have laughed if he made it to the moustache or nose!

the second time, on a cloth rose my daughter left on the table. the third time, he'd just begun his escape.

when i picked him up, he would curl, so fat and squishy, into a ball. i kept thinking he was looking for more food. for a little guy, he sure ate a lot in three days.

but mr. fussy didn't want to eat. he kept roaming around. i kept returning him to the foodstuffs. turns out, he's looking for a place to be still and silent. to center himself before he dangles down from a pad of silk.

late last night, i went to check on him. there he was hanging like a j

he's got the most delicate longhorn antennae. his rear looks just like his head and when he gets spooked, he tucks his head under his front parts and gets real still. with his tush up in the air. since that is the part usually revealed by the stem of the plant, it makes a great deal of sense.

there are at least three other monarch caterpillars i know of, saw them walking home from the library yesterday. we're getting greedy now. but we only had four days with dear mr. fussy. so now i've got to get him a friend.

he's still and silent, feet in the air, like peter (as a poem i wrote once says).

his antannae aren't wafting around anymore, and he is just hanging there waiting to become. to metamorphosize. very inspiring. to have that time come upon you and yield to it. i hope when my time comes, i yield.

that i can let go and dangle, until the change is complete, and i can fly.

milkweed

on the walk to the library my daughter spots a monarch caterpillar. how she saw it, i don't know, it was tucked under leaves of a plant by the road. i stopped and said,

oh, how sweet.

for you see, i'd always wanted to do a monarch butterfly life cycle, but never got the chance.

on we went, and i assumed my position in the corner chair.

not moments after i began reading, she appeared with a pile of books.

let's go mom.

go, we did. he was not on the plant anymore, so we stood there and searched.

there he is!

my dauther exclaimed.

we got him and the plant he had been on when first we saw him.

we brought him directly home and started to think about how much this guy would eat over the next few days and weeks. depending on where in his life cycle we found him.

he's rather large, at least an inch and a half. his little antennae blowing in the breeze as we brought him home on a stick. he clung to it and rode along without complaining once.

we set him up and began our search in earnest of what we needed to feed this guy.

as you likely know, monarch caterpillars eat ONLY milkweed.

i searched the internet and found the plant we had, until i saw a picture of dogbane, which is commonly mistaken for the plant we need.

and i remembered a dream i had back in college.
an apache family had adopted me, i think they were trying to manipulate my brain. and one night i dreamt of my dear friend's brother. i told him and his sister of the dream, their brother looked at me and said,

you're milkweed, i can tell just by looking at you.

i never understood this dream, but the brother in my dream was the herbalist of the family so it was curious he was the one to say it.

we parted ways many years ago, and i've not thought of them for a great while.

now, in need of milkweed, the dream comes to me.

i could identify milkweed in texas. but here, i just wasn't sure and the little striped sock of a guy wasn't eating. he was just still. as if he were ready to cocoon.

i debated all day about whether to set him loose or wait it out to see if what i've got is actually milkweed. but he wouldn't eat and i feared the worst.

turn him loose,

i was told, by dear friends.

i didn't want to kill him, but my friends telling me this little life was now my charge ramped up the anxiety for me to astounding levels.

i didn't know what to do, so i, after much confusion and anxiety waited. it couldn't be long until the little guy told me if i had milkweed or not.

he started eating some time around four. devoured an entire large leaf by six. he's not in a hurry by any means. but at least i know i've got food for him for the next few days.

i woke up this morning and he was still eating. pooping. doing what nature mandates.

and i wrote a great many angst laden poems.

the milkweed situation is kind of like my life. the problems are obvious to everyone but me. everyone seems to be able to identify the milkweed of my life, but i have no clue what it looks like.

so this adventure will cause me to learn to identify some of the milkweed, and hopefully watch another life come into being, a transformation. but winter is coming soon, the chill has begun. the migration soon upon us. he needs to change soon, or overwinter encased in silence.

this little life now my charge. what lesson does he have to teach me?

corner chair

there is this wooden rocking chair, with thick magenta cushions, gold diamonds bedeck these cushions. they are not fastened to the chair by any means so when you rise, they fall. very selfless that way. laying themselves down again and again for strangers. this chair sits in the lounge type area of my library.

it has a fireplace, coffee table, and six chairs, two rockers, four teal hard library reading chairs. i prefer the rocker. and when i arrive, the rockers are usually flanking the fireplace. i move the one i want to sit in, to the very corner where the plate glass windows meet.

i turn it around so have a view in two directions of the yard, right into the swaying trees. i sit in this chair for hours at a time. reading, writing, watching.

sometimes, poems find me there. waiting on the edge of a dream. sometimes apollo. sometimes, just silence.

many times i have come to that chair with nothing, and left, hands full of words.

scurrying to the computer, i send them on. out to my people. the readers of my poems.

i am not one who waits, who plants forests like so many squirrels with their cache of nuts.

i am one who deceminates poetry almost as fast as it comes to me. i like to see it fly upon the breeze, over the tree tops, out of my hands. release it just as easily as i found it. or it found me.

it is nice to have a place to be found. when i come to this chair, sometimes it is occupied, a little girl was the last person i had to wait out. she had on dirty white sandals, a board book in hand. and her back turned away from the windows.

they have stopped rearranging the chairs after my visits and i often find the chair in the same location as i left it last. where the plate glass windows meet. though facing in. away from the trees.

i knew if i sat close to the little girl, being a strange adult i could drive her away, intimidate her with my presence. adults think this way, i am no better. but she was in my chair after all.

so i sat beside her, her brother occupied the other rocker, so i could not sit in it either. her mother called from beyond the foyer, and she reluctantly yielded the corner chair. which i promptly turned around and watched my trees.

how possessive we become when we are familiar with a place. like the third pew on the left in church. it is where i sit. for a clear, unobstructed view of the priest offering the sacraments. people have apologized for taking this, my pew, at times. and i say,

no, no. change is good.

but i lie.

if i do not have time to unwind. to sit in my chair, crosslegged. and rock myself into my wakingdreamstate, then i just get up and leave. usually my girl drags me away. sometimes she gives me hours. sometimes moments only. poems do not compress themselves into moments. sometimes they need to be coaxed out of silence by the gentle sway of a few trees and a rocking chair. sometimes they reward my silence with their presence. sometimes they do not come at all.

so i go to the chair in the corner today, hopefully, just as the library opens, when it is most quiet. and there i will rock and tend my waking dreams as a gardner his roses. there i will find the muse, perhaps she'll speak.