“I skinned my duck yesterday and stuffed it today. It is wonderful that a man, having taken such an enterprise, ever persevered in it to the end, and equally wonderful that he succeeded. To skin a bird, drawing backward, wrong side out, over the legs and wings down to the base of the mandibles!…But what a pot-bellied thing is a stuffed bird compared to the fresh, dead one I found.”
                               The Journal of Henry David Thoreau, 7 April 1855
 

      Man, I skinned no ducks today. Despite all my endeavors, it feels like I got nothing done today but buy and change four light bulbs. This was one of those days wherein, as Dad would say, “Everything  I touched turned to shit.” I had four tasks: to work on a problem with my main EEC contact person, to read Thoreau for the week of April 7-14th, to have a dinner/planning meeting with two EEC colleagues, and to drive out to Dan Gallik’s Arabica poetry reading inear Bainbridge. The EEC contact person and I spent the whole day trying to make contact.. I would call when she said she’d be in, and she was out.  When she called me, I was out because after waiting three hours, I decided to buy some groceries (which I have been out of for days) and light bulbs. (Hence, my outness.) The two colleagues changed the time of our dinner/meeting but by the time they called to tell me, I had already left the house. When I tried to find all three of these people at the place we were to meet, no one was there, and I learned later, they had finished up an hour early. By the time I finally found where everyone was, it was getting too late for me to meet and get out near Chagrin, so I headed out for Chagrin. As I was part way there, the radio predicted dire ice and snow, and I gave up and came home. 
      On April 8th, a day later, Thoreau adds to the topic of skinning his duck, “When taking the brain out of my duck yesterday, I perceived that the brain was the marrow of the head, and it is probably only a less sentient brain that runs down the backbone—the spinal marrow.” That’s how my brain feels tonight.
      I remember Seamus Heaney once leaving  Cleveland after his reading there, in the middle of a tour, long before his Nobel prize, said as he was being dropped at the airport by Bob McDonough, “Well, off to simulate new life.” 
      I'm no Nobel poet, but I hope I can regenerate thinking and feeling for tomorrow.
 

Tuesday, 8 April 2003

“The ground white with frost, and all the meadows also, and a low mist curling over the smooth water now in the sunlight, which gives the water a silver-plated look…Quite a wintery sight.”
                                                   --The Journal of Henry David Thoreau, April 8, 1855

      Well, on the one hand, we didn’t get all the ice and 4-6 inches of snow predicted, as much of the Midwest and New England did, none really, though it is cold and frosty this morning. 
      Yesterday left me feeling a bit down, and concerned about merely simulating new life for my afternoon with the kids, I went back to that quote from Keats’s Endymionwhich comforts me so much when I am down, the 10 lines I have memorized that begin “A thing of beauty is a joy forever.” I recalled that after those 10 lines, Keats describes things in nature that are a comfort (sheep, trees, daffodils, muskroses, rills), and despite myself, I went back to one of the first poem exercises I ever created for work with kids, my own take on “Odes,” a little bit of Neruda, a little bit of my “Ode to a Pomegranate,” a poem one of my former students wrote with the line “Praise to you, duck” and this time, I added Keats and the idea of nature being a comfort. 
      I was scheduled for a new school, St. Paul’s in North Canton, near my hometown, and a new place to meet the seventh graders, “NLSS.” I had my doubts when I figured out it was one of several small bay-windowed areas in the November Lodge called “Sunspots.” It seemed very small and cramped. Still, everyone said they had enough room to write, they liked the spot. So I did my schtick, and they noted metaphors, said they knew all about metaphors from their seventh grade English teacher, and we all agreed we could include at least one metaphor in each ode. 
       Well, truly this teacher must have drilled metaphor because metaphors flew out of these kids like explosions out of 20 time bombs:

“You’re as happy as if it’s a holiday.” (from Matt’s “Ode to a Bird”)

“Leaves which run on branches [thick as] cars on [city] streets.” (Greg’s “Ode to Trees”)

“Old and brittle as an old man/ yet smart/ knowing his surroundings” ( Tim’s “Ode to a Tree”)

“…the pain like that of thinking too hard/to write an ode” (Matt’s “Ode to Burning Leaves”)

“Trees in a forest…like pretzel rods bought from a store” (Emily’s “Ode to the Trees”)

“Sky is the hole that never ends…filled with translucent marshmallows” (Andrew’s “Ode to the Sky”) 
 

      I had asked them to try to write their ode about one of the organisms at the EEC, and a girl named Becka sighed, “I want to write on the deer, but I haven’t seen one yet.” I said, “Well, write an ode to the deer you haven’t seen yet.” I was touched by the ensuing poem, which I read last as we finished up and we read the kids’ poems aloud:
 

      Then, and I swear to God, this knocked me out, someone said, “Look at the deer,” and five deer came walking across the clearing. One stayed off to the left with his butt to us the whole time (and so we got a lesson from Colleen on the white tail of the white-tailed deer), and the other four, for all the world as though their stage directions said, “Enter left, stand center-stage for 10 minutes,” stood centered in the middle Sun Spot Window, chewing and staring at the kids, even though cameras flashed and seventh grade bodies darted and popped (though quietly, very quietly). 
      Then they left, and another group came, and we did it again, without the miracle of the deer but with more miraculous odes.
 
 

Thursday, 10 April 2003

“The west and northwest side [of D.R.’s shanty] is well-nigh covered with slips of paper, on which are written some sentence or paragraph from R.’s favorite books.”
                                                       --The Journal of Henry David Thoreau, April 10, 1857
 

      I spent yesterday typing up the kids’ odes into a little chapbook. I tried not to; it takes a lot of time which I am not supposed to be spending and no one seems to interested in having me do if (or even would prefer I did not do it). I’m not sure why not, maybe because this is a pretty performance-centered place. Certainly performance poetry is all the rage these days, and I do like to perform. But I just cannot stop typing the kids’ words and printing them. I do like the words on the page, too, and this is, after all, something poets have been doing at least since writing was invented. I suppose the spoken and the written cultures often mystify each other. I received a wonderful email from Dover Joe McLaughlin (who has the writers’ website, Pale Horse), saying he had read this journal and realized how hard I was working, how hard it is to see what a poet/teacher does day to day. Like Sam Hammill’s quote on how “Poets work is shadow work.”
      Anyhow, this morning, I went in at 7:00 a.m. to get everything done (drop off my materials for the day, gather art supplies in a suitcase from one building to wheel them to the cafeteria, where we were assigned to work) before delivering a breakfast quote at 8:00 a.m. Then, in the morning session, the kids wrote persona poems and made broadsides. That has become a very fun activity; from the outside, it sort of looks like taking 12 kids, stirring them up, and adding glitter, but I do manage in five minutes to work in the history of the broadside and show a lot of examples from Brian's Bloody Twin letterpress. 
      I met Mom and Dad for lunch in Peninsula. As we were leaving lunch, we stopped at “The Crooked River Herb Farm Store” (sullyboo@aol.com), where we met Kathleen and her white Standard Poodle puppy, Sully. The shop is filled with a big vat of herbal tea and jars of homemade herb jam with crackers, all for the tasting, herbs, recipes, stationary and other gifts. (Dad had his doubts about the “Lemon Verbena Jelly,” but when I told him it tasted like honey, he sidled up and tried it and thought it was good.) Kathleen has a farm where she gives tours, often to schoolchildren, and we shared stories of the agony and the ecstasy of working with schools. 
      I led Mom and Dad back onto I-77, then exited for Staples, where I had a little 7-page chapbook of the kids’ odes printed. It seemed to take awfully long, and I noticed the employees were hand collating the top page. Then they broke it to me that they would have to hand-staple, too. (I find it ironic that a store named Staples does not have the capability to machine-staple a document of 6 pages with a cover of a different color.) I just took it and stapled it myself while I watched the evening news, which is of late presenting the festive-like looting going on in Baghdad, not to mention the U.S. soldier who took it upon himself to cover the statue of the dictator with the U.S. flag. 
       But before stapling and news, I went back to the center to do my studio hour and after that, hanged the kids’ 22 broadsides as background for their presentations tomorrow.
      I have had a terrible time sleeping many nights and last night only slept 4 hours, felt like a train wreck today and am going to bed early tonight. What is that Edna St. Vincent Millay poem?—found it online, “Grown Up” 

                             Was it for this I uttered prayers,
                              And sobbed and cursed and kicked the stairs,
                              That now, domestic as a plate,
                              I should retire at half-past eight?
 
 

Sunday, 13 April 2003 morning

“The robin is the only bird as yet that makes a business of singing, steadily singing—sings continuously out of pure joy and melody of soul, carols. The jingle of the song sparrow, simple and sweet as it is, is not sufficiently continuous to command and hold attention, and the bluebird’s is but a transient warble…but the song of the robin on the elms or oaks, loud and clear and heard afar through the streets of the village, makes a fit conclusion to a spring day.”
                                               --The Journal of Henry David Thoreau, 13 April 1852

      One of the parents from St. Paul’s school asked me if, as I were walking through the day, I was thinking in verse. As usual, I didn’t answer well on the spot, but on Friday morning when I woke up and heard some bird—which I assume was a robin—fling 11 wild notes that sounded like someone punching randomly on a touch-tone phone, I actually thought of the poem by Matt  had written on Tuesday:
 

      I mean, I recalled what I could, which were his first and last two lines.  I have regretted that I have been too anxious while I was here to write poetry, but I do feel that the kids’ poems have been my poems in a way, feel comforted by them and hear them in my head. Maybe I will be able to make a cento of them!
      Friday morning, I went to closing ceremony—which I almost missed because the time had been changed and no one told me, but once again, my perpetual earliness worked to my advantage. I read Matt’s poem and two others, handed out the little 7-page chapbooks, and said hasta la vista.
      In the late afternoon, I stopped by the Administration Building, where the park ranger, Josh, and his wife helped me identify a wonderful willow that is in front of the on-grounds house they live in and then Josh found the Latin term for “Red Oak” for me.
      In the evening, I drove across the park to Hines Hill Conference Center to meet with the Cuyahoga Valley Nature Writers. I arrived early, with no one in the parking lot but a birder, who might have gotten an eyeful if he ever trained the binoculars on me because as I stepped onto the path, four deer stepped toward me, and for the next 7 minutes we danced together. The dance was titled, “Hey, Come Over Here—Hey Stay Over There but Tell Me Who Are You and Where Are You Going?” One deer in particular was very curious and came very very close.
      Eventually they got tired of the dance, and I went indoors, where I  met Alice Philbin, who has led the workshop for a number of years. Eventually, there were 11-12 of us there, a really perfect number for a workshop: Alice, Polly, Mary, Rosemary, Martha, Rob, Leonard, Marc, Molly, and me. I took my fourth week of the online journals, and Rob offered up a possibility for my pussy willow question. He says that people usually crop the domesticated pussy willows so the branches are fuller with the gray tufts, and perhaps I am recalling those. I can’t imagine my father cropping the bush in our yard, but I will ask him. I may be remembering just that one and not the ones across the street at the pond.
      The group is interested in participating in the summer, “Poets in the Park, Writers in the Woods,” and said they understood the glacial rate at which the park moves in planning, just to keep them posted. We all drove off into the dark of the park at about 9:30.
 

Saturday morning, 
      I met Marc and Jayn Crail for breakfast at Fisher’s Pub. We’ve been laughing for days because when I called Marc’s office (Superintendent Schools in Kent, Ohio), a substitute secretary said, “And may I tell him who you are? [a pause, me, trying to figure out what to say] I mean, where do you know him from?” I blurted, “High school—I mean, our high school—I mean, we went to high school together. It was a long time ago. Maybe my sister knew him before that….” She laughed, said, “I will let him figure this out!” Marc got on the phone laughing and said, “You didn’t know where to begin, did you?” And I said, “Oh yes, but I knew it would never end.”
      After high school, Marc and I both did education stuff, and when I started doing more art and then art in education stuff, I worked at schools where he was a teacher, then a principal, then superintendent. Jayn is in education, too, used to teach first grade and special reading programs and now does a lot of in-service and curriculum support for teachers in a different school system than Marc. One of the things we discussed on and off during the morning is our concern for the current undermining of the public school system. The latest news is that the current testing, testing, testing that goes on is not enough and the Bush administration wants to begin competency testing of the four-year-olds in Headstart, too. 
      (It reminds me of a long talk Friday Night with one of my god daughters. She has been doing Americorps work in Texas, assigned to teach first graders. Ori had no college training in education, has been assigned these very young students, many of whom do not have English as a first language (if a language at all). She spends two out of every six weeks testing, tests that sound draconian to me--but of course, the Bush legacy to the state. After two years of working very hard for two years, little money, and an administrator who only knows how to scold, Ori is leaving for grad school in urban development.) 
      After breakfast, Marc and Jayn and I went walking at the park Ledges. We had with us the Crails' very small fawn-colored rescued greyhound Rita (short for Rita Burrita, her name from her previous life), who’d been patiently waiting in the car. Her patience paid off, and she got a good long walk at a site she truly knows and loves.
      I have laughed often in reading Thoreau these past few weeks about a passage in March of 1855 when he captured a flying squirrel for a few days. The whole passage suggested to me that Thoreau needed to get a dog! And I guess I am in the same state here, miss my daily walks with Brenna and all the dog-walkers back in Lynn. No wonder I am out dancing with the deer!
      In the evening, I had the last visit with my two Ohio nieces while I am in the state. My oldest niece turns 13 in two weeks, so her mother, sister, and I celebrated early with dinner at the Mustard Seed. I was in a quandary over a gift for her, hate to give money, but thought back to being 13 and figured it was probably a good bet. I think I hit it—uh, right on the money. Afterwards, we visited a toy store next door, and they demonstrated how all the 89 cent toys worked.
      This morning, I head off into my last week here. I’ll go to the Akron Museum’s poetry reading this afternoon, meet old—I mean long-standing since they are my age—CSU friends for dinner, then get ready for the week at the EEC. This week, I think I am going to throw acrostics and serenades into the mix, bookmarks and postcards in place of broadsides.