poems and solitude: midsummer in massachusetts...

As noted previously, this has been a deliciously contemplative week for me: no music gigs to play, no meetings to attend, no shopping trips to plan, and precious little interaction with the wider world. Ok, I gave Robert Mueller the benefit of the doubt and tried to listen for 30 minutes but it was too painful. Besides, I can read the text - or summaries - at another time at my own pace. So, while it rained I read, prayed, wrote and cleaned house. It seems that sister rain has taken a vacation over the past 48 hours giving Frère Jacques a chance to cut grass, prune some branches, weed the garden and replace a few steps on our wooden deck.

Along the way, two fascinating poems made their way into my consciousness today: "Saturday Morning Market" by Carrie Newcomer and "Casa" by Rigoberto Gonzalez. Each speaks to something true within me although, at first blush, they feel like contradictions. Newcomer, as some know, is a favorite singer/songwriter artist who shares some of the most moving and heart-warming songs I have heard in decades. The Boston Globe describes her as a "prairie mystic" and Rolling Stone writes that "she asks all the right questions" in her songs, poems and seminars.

In 2019 she was the recipient of the Shalem Institute Contemplative Voices Award. Recent media appearances include PBS’s Religion and Ethics and Krista Tippett’s On Being. In the fall of 2009 and 2011 Newcomer was a cultural ambassador to India, invited by the American Embassy of India, resulting in her interfaith collaborative benefit album Everything is Everywhere with world master of the Indian Sarod, Amjad Ali Khan and his sons Ayan and Amaan. In 2012 and 2013 Carrie traveled to Kenya and the Middle East performing in schools, spiritual communities and AIDS hospitals. She has 17 nationally released albums on Available Light and Rounder Records, including The Point of Arrival, The Beautiful Not Yet, A Permeable Life, and Everything is Everywhere. Newcomer has also released two companion books of poetry and essays, A Permeable Life: Poems and Essays and The Beautiful Not Yet: Poems, Essays, & Lyrics. Newcomer’s first theatrical production, Betty’s Diner: The Musical, was performed at a sold out run at Purdue University in 2015 and is now available to interested theaters, universities, and spiritual communities... She regularly works with Parker J. Palmer in live programs, including Healing the Heart of Democracy: A Gathering of Spirits for the Common Good and What We Need is Here: Hope, Hard Times, and Human Possibility. Newcomer and Palmer also are actively collaborating on The Growing Edge, a website, podcast, and retreat. Spirituality and Health Magazine named The Growing Edge collaboration as one of the top ten spiritual leaders and programs for the next 20 years... She lives in the woods of southern Indiana with her husband and two shaggy dogs. (For more information, please go to her website: https://www.carrienewcomer.com/home)

Her poem evokes all that is gentle, honest and restorative about small town farmers markets and those who make a commitment to cherish the community they create. Having had the privilege of making music at some of these gatherings, her words ring true.

I am awash with a deep abiding love
For shiny purple eggplants
Real and rounded in such womanly ways.
I am beside myself with wonder
At the many shapes and hues
Of crook-necked squash and new potatoes,
Earthy red and ochre tan,
Goldfinch yellow and deep summer green.
I am grateful to tears
For fresh beet greens and rhubarb,
Green peppers and Swiss chard,
And for the first vine-ripe tomatoes
That are so perfect you go ahead
And eat one like an apple,Leaning forward
Without looking
To see if anyone is watching.
I am blessing the names
Of the farmers and bread bakers,
Sunburnt and beautiful,
Freckled and friendly,
Who make change
And comfortable conversation.

This is real abundance
Of the senses and spirit,
A true kind of church,
With its arms open wide
To the eaters and eaten,
The growers and grown,
To all who come looking
For what is common and earthly,
Luminous and lasting,
And to be dumbstruck with wonder
By what we carry back home
In an ordinary basket.

González hails from Bakersfield, CA, was raised in Michoacán, Mexico and currently lives in NYC. "He is the author of several poetry books, including So Often the Pitcher Goes to Water until It Breaks (1999), a National Poetry Series selection; Other Fugitives and Other Strangers (2006); Black Blossoms (2011); and Unpeopled Eden (2013), winner of a Lambda Literary Award".

He has also written two bilingual children’s books, Soledad Sigh-Sighs (2003) and Antonio’s Card (2005); the novel Crossing Vines (2003), winner of ForeWord Magazine’s Fiction Book of the Year Award; and a memoir, Butterfly Boy: Memories of a Chicano Mariposa (2006); and a book of stories Men without Bliss (2008). González earned a BA from the University of California, Riverside and graduate degrees from University of California, Davis and Arizona State University. The recipient of Guggenheim and NEA fellowships, and of various international artist residencies, González writes a Latino book column for the El Paso Times of Texas. In 2014, he was awarded the Lenore Marshall Poetry Prize by the Academy of American Poets. He is contributing editor for Poets & Writers, on the Board of Directors of the National Book Critics Circle, and on the Advisory Circle of Con Tinta, a collective of Chicano/Latino activist writers. (For more information, please see the Poetry Foundation @ https://www.poetryfoundation.org/po)

There is wisdom and honesty in this poem, too - but it is not immediately easy to hear. Written from the perspective of a house that once was a home, the first pass for me was jarring. It made me sad (not a bad thing, but still a surprise.) After a few more readings, however, the heart of this work took root - and I was moved by an unexpected depth of tenderness born of real life and love.

I am not your mother, I will not be moved
by the grief or gratitude of men
who weep like orphans at my door.
I am not a church. I do not answer
prayers but I never turn them down.

Come in and kneel or sit or stand,
the burden of your weight won't lessen
no matter the length of your admission.
Tell me anything you want, I have to listen
but don't expect me to respond

when you tell me you have lost your job
or that your wife has found another love
or that your children took their laughter
to another town. You feel alone and empty?
Color me surprised! I didn't notice they were gone.

Despite the row of faces pinned like medals
to my walls, I didn't earn them.
The scratches on the wood are not my scars.
If there's a smell of spices in the air
blame the trickery of kitchens

or your sad addiction to the yesterdays
that never keep no matter how much you believe
they will. I am not a time capsule.
I do not value pithy things like locks
of hair and milk teeth and ticket stubs

and promise rings—mere particles
of dust I'd blow out to the street if I could
sneeze. Take your high school jersey
and your woman's wedding dress away
from me. Sentimental hoarding bothers me.

So off with you, old couch that cries
in coins as it gets dragged out to the porch.
Farewell, cold bed that breaks its bones
in protest to eviction or foreclosure or
whatever launched this grim parade

of exits. I am not a pet. I do not feel
abandonment. Sometimes I don't even see you
come or go or stay behind. My windows
are your eyes not mine. If you should die
inside me I'll leave it up to you to tell

the neighbors. Shut the heaters off
I do not fear the cold. I'm not the one
who shrinks into the corner of the floor
because whatever made you think
this was a home with warmth isn't here

to sweet-talk anymore. Don't look at me
that way, I'm not to blame. I granted
nothing to the immigrant or exile
that I didn't give a bordercrosser or a native
born. I am not a prize or a wish come true.

I am not a fairytale castle. Though I
used to be, in some distant land inhabited
by dreamers now extinct. Who knows
what happened there? In any case, good
riddance, grotesque fantasy and mirth.

So long, wall-to-wall disguise in vulgar
suede and chintz. Take care, you fool,
and don't forget that I am just a house,
a structure without soul for those whose
patron saints are longing and despair. 

Tomorrow our loved ones from Brooklyn will arrive late. On Saturday morning, we'll go to a family concert at Tanglewood featuring the Boston Symphony. And eat native sweet corn for supper. We'll laugh and sing and play, too. González is right: the emotions and memories we celebrate are born of our humanity not our place. Like Newcomer, I am still grateful for a safe and beautiful sanctuary to nourish these memories and our shared humanity. I can't help but think of her song, "I Believe."