January 29: A Poem by Anne Porter

I heard an Anne Porter poem, "Winter Twilight," read by Garrison Keillor on "The Writer's Almanac" several days ago, and I can't get it out of my head. I think it resonates so strongly because it's very close to my own sensibility and aesthetic; without at all meaning to sound full of myself, I feel like I could have written that poem. All winter I've been looking up at the squirrel dreys (nests) wondering how to turn those big clumps of leaves into something poetic. And she did it so naturally, so perfectly. I think I would have enjoyed talking with her about her craft, although much of her poetry takes a more religious turn than my own. Alas, she passed away well before I had the chance to meet her, but I was fortunate enough to stay in her house once.

Anne Porter was the wife of the artist Fairfield Porter, whose work I much admire. In 2008 I attended Art Week, a retreat held on Great Spruce Head Island, which is still owned by the Porter family, on the other side of Penobscot Bay. A handful of artists and one other writer and I spent a wonderful week in what had been Anne and Fairfield's house, inspired by Anne's poetry (read by her niece Anina, who runs the retreat), Fairfield's art (including a painting of the great room where we spent most of our time, looking utterly unchanged, as well as the family of dragons he painted on the upper walls of that same great room), and brother Eliot's photography (his color bird photography was some of the first and best of its kind).

Ah, that's what I wish
I'd said about dreys, the moon.
But grateful she did.

November 11: Necklace

My husband is away again this week, and while I like the time alone, I miss coming home from work and having someone there other than the cat with whom to share my day. And of course I miss his physical presence, that comforting power of touch.

A brief digression: A couple of summers ago I spent a week at an artist/writer retreat on Great Spruce Head Island, an island in eastern Penobscot Bay that has been owned for several generations by the Porter family (as in, photographer Eliot and painter Fairfield). We stayed in Fairfield Porter's house, ate gourmet, organic food, and did whatever we wanted with our time. I napped, read, and roamed the island, watching birds and writing notes and some mediocre poems about the incredible landscape: fog, sea birds, stony beaches, dense spruce forests carpeted with moss and lichen, the sound of the waves, sunny meadows where deer graze. But in the end what I felt really inspired to write were haiku. And interestingly, some of my most successful ones were sensual "love notes" to my husband, whom I was missing. For our last night's "show," while all the artists (there were nine artists and two writers) arranged and hung their paintings, pastels and drawings for display, I paired some of the haiku I had written with appropriate natural objects and created a tactile poetry/object to create an interactive exhibit of sorts. This is one of the haiku I wrote for my husband, written on a piece of paper roughly torn into the shape of a heart and stuck to a heart-shaped stone I found on one of the island beaches:

If I were going to similarly display the following haiku with an object, it would be the necklace I was wearing of big, chunky green and yellow stones interspersed with carved wooden beads. When I got undressed last night, I was surprised to feel how hot the beads were from being in contact all day with my skin. The sensuality of that realization made me miss my husband.

Home alone tonight.

Unclasped necklace in my hand,

wooden beads still warm.