A friend who is creating a pollinator meadow in her home brought my attention to the April 3, 2022 article in the New York Times about a movement in Appleton, Wisconsin, begun two years ago, now is becoming nationwide. It is called, “No-Mow May.” By chance this week I saw two minutes of a local news broadcast, and the lead story was the adoption of “No-Mow May” by households in the Minneapolis suburb of Edina.
After only two years, the data is very encouraging. This small practice of restraint is allowing the increased health, diversity, and vigor of that workhorse pollinator, bees. This kind of news is the kind we need in April on Earth Day–one simple but powerful step that all of us can consider taking right now and in the sweet spring days ahead. My poem today (“No-Mow May”) is a mediation of this set of ideas and actions. The photographs above come from the warmer April of 2017. The ones below from our chilly house and garden here in 2022.
Wedding Dress and Apple Blossoms (Photo: Leslie Schultz)
There really is no one quite like Mary Oliver (1935-2019), and her book, American Primitive (Back Bay Books, April 30, 1983) contains a poem I have almost gotten by heart (but not quite!) “John Chapman” both sums up and enlarges the familar story of an American legend, Johnny Appleseed. In a similar way, for me Oliver has seeded my mind with images and new understanding of the natural world.
JOHN CHAPMAN
He wore a tin pot for a hat, in which
he cooked his supper
toward evening
in the Ohio forests. He wore
a sackcloth shirt and walked
barefoot on feet crooked as roots. And everywhere he went
the apple trees sprang up behind him lovely
as young girls.
No Indian or settler or wild beast
ever harmed him, he for his part honored
everything, all God's creatures! thought little,
on a rainy night,
of sharing the shelter of a hollow log touching
flesh with any creatures there: snakes,
raccoon possibly, or some great slab of bear.
Mrs. Price, late of Richland County,
at whose parents' house he sometimes lingered,
recalled: he spoke
only once of woman and his gray eyes
brittled into ice. "Some
are deceivers," he whispered, and she felt
the pain of it, remembered it
into her old age.
Well, the trees he planted or gave away
prospered, and he became
the good legend, you do
what you can if you can; whatever
the secret, and the pain,
there's a decision: to die,
or to live, to go on
caring about something. In the spring, in Ohio,
in the forests that are left you can still find
sign of him: patches
of cold white fire.
Mary Oliver
Background for My Poem, “Seva”:
Coneflower in Full Bloom (Photo: Leslie Schult)
The word “seva” comes from Sanskrit. It is pronounced “SAVE-a.” In Yoga philosophy, it means selfless service, the kind done without any expectation of recognition, reward, or even the satisfaction of knowing it was effective.
I have been thinking about this a lot, lately, especially as regards to planetary interconnectedness. Perhaps this kind of selfless service is the most enlightened form of self-interest, too? Sometimes, I think, selfless service means getting myself out of the way so that I can see the next right thing to do and then do it!
I wish that I could have photographed the goldfinch itself, but here are two images of her temporary perch and feeding station.
I was introduced to the poetry of Seamus Heaney when I was in graduate school. Even though money then was extremely tight, I bought two slender paperback collections of his poems then, Death of a Naturalist (1966) and Field Work (Farrar, Straus, Giroux; 1979). As you can see from the photograph of the remaining volume, I read them and read them almost into tatters. When Heaney spoke at the Guthrie in Minneapolis 1996, shortly after he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature, I was thrilled to be in the audience. (Thank you, MPR, for archiving the recording of his talk that day!)
His work undoubtedly stands the test of time, and I continue to see new facets of his understated brilliance and expansive vision each time I read a poem anew. Oddly, I don’t see any direct influence in my own work. Maybe it is so pervasive I am blind to it? Or perhaps Heaney is so much part of the soil of Ireland (in addition to being a citizen of the world) that he cannot be imitated? I don’t know. But I thought that this morning I would share the opening lines of his homage elegy poem to Boston’s own Robert Lowell. This poem is simply called “Elegy.” In opening my copy to it today, the spine shattered, which I find somehow appropriate.
Elegy
The way we are living,
timorous or bold,
with have been our life,
Robert Lowell,
the sill geranium lit
by the lamp I write by,
a wind from the Irish Sea
is shaking it--
here where we sat
ten days ago, with you,
the master elegist
and welder of English...."
Seamus Heaney
Background on My Poem for the Day, “Letter to a Yellow Chair”:
This book was an eye-opening gift to me from a friend (Thank you, Ann!) Through it, and the membership I now hold in the Cloud Appreciation Society, along with their daily email of an image and an explanation of the science behind clouds, I have become ever more alert to the forms and beauties of the skies. I even like cloudy days a little bit better–though not completely socked-in grey skies like Northfield is experiencing in this moment. Not enlightened enough for that, clearly!
Background for My Poem “Views/Points”:
This poem is a mystery to me. The orange and white just appeared. Possibly a longing for summer was the root of this imagist construction.
Sunflower in Our Garden, 2021 (Photos: Leslie Schultz)
Yesterday’s mail brought a welcome envelope containing the newest issue of a favorite journal of mine, Blue Unicorn. As a subscriber, I welcome this journal twice a year because I know there will be something interesting in it that I couldn’t find anywhere else. This issue makes me especially happy to have because it contains my short poem, “The Craft of Poetry,” inspired by Robert Frost‘s masterful and chilling poem, “Fire and Ice.” Frost’s poem, known to most, is another one that I have memorized. Because of that, I think, the sounds of it were simply there, waiting, and that it was this tight net of rhythm, meter, and rhyme that gave rise to my own poem. (I used different rhyme sounds, but otherwise followed Frost’s nonce construction.)
This issue of Blue Unicorn also contains the best statement in a journal I have ever seen on the whole fraught topic of rejection, as well as more that eighty poems. So far I have read only a small fraction but what I have read whets my appetite. It is fun to see work by poets whose work is already known to me (A quick look finds work by Laurence Thomas, “The End of Desire”; Kathryn Jacobs, “Paying Court” and “Human Beans”; Lynn D. Gilbert, “A Sonnet for You and Yours”; John Hart, “It Seems to Me and I”–these last two playful exchanges on shifts in “correct” English usage–Dan Campion, “The Conspiracy”; and Shutta Crum, “Some, Too Indifferent to Spring Wind (for Emily Dickinson), as well as translations (by Robert E. Tanner, Thomas Feeny, and Susan McLean) of work by Alexander Pushkin, Antonio Machado, and Charles d’Orleans.) I know I will read the work in this issue many times over.
Blue Unicorn’s founding editor, John Hart, also shares thought-provoking essays on his poetry blog from time to time as the spirit moves. You can find his essays at Memorable Speech. Modern poetry is a very large tent, and Hart’s lifelong experience as a poet, editor, and critic gives him a rare perspective. His most recent essay succinctly elucidated for me one of my least favorite trends of modern poetry–known as “Language Poetry,” I learned–and also helped me understand just why this kind don’t appeal to me, but also understand its attraction for those who write, publish, and enjoy such work. As a bonus, I love the way Hart puts sentences together.
(Photos: Leslie Schultz)
Background for My Poem for April 19 (emailed to those who requested my personal poem-a-day), “Spring Frolic”:
Many of you know that Tim and I welcomed Stella into our home last month. She is a rescue Poodle-Maltese mix, just over five years old, originally from Houston. She has brought new liveliness into our house, and she just adores Julia and Julia’s guinea pigs, Peaches and Pancake. Although she hates the cold (not being used to it), she loves her walks. She will leap into the air like a trained dolphin whenever anyone dons a jacket. We look forward to warmer weather when we can take her to a local dog park and let her run to her heart’s content. (We have learned that Stella does enjoy sitting on a pillow on a garden chair when we make a fire outside, but she did NOT enjoy the recent spate of hail, pictured above.)
