Once in a Blue Muse: poetry

Showing posts with label poetry. Show all posts

Wednesday, January 14, 2026

"What is Essential is Invisible to the Eye"

“What is Essential is Invisible to the Eye”*

Lisa Janice Cohen
January 14, 2026

The road curves. It leans into hillsides shaped

by the ghosts of trees long since felled to make

way for hardscrabble pastures, stone walls, dour

farmers who believed in progress until the day

it flattened them beneath its broad wheels. Houses

ground to rubble and sticks, moving the dead

expedient. Only the living left to complain.

In the end, we are the ones owned by geography.

What grows is changed by sunlight and soil

until we rarely recognize ourselves outside

of the places we were first planted. We are all

interlopers here. Even those who count lineage

through faded headstones and common names.

I am still new enough to be struck silent by the ice

coated glitter of a bare maple. A white birch

glows against the leaden sky and I want to weep

with the futility of explaining why

you should care about a single ordinary tree

when the world contains forest after forest.

It would be easy to blame the first miner

who carved coal from a seam deep in the earth.

Or the first roustabout who drove a drill

through the ground for oil. But we have always

been remaking the world, deciding this mountain,

this lake, this town means little in our abundance.

Trading our futures for gold as if joy and sorrow

both were fungible assets. The sky spits

rain and snow, unable to decide the season.

I return to the road, now cut through a farm

on the valley floor. Horses in winter coats

graze, incurious about the ribbon that divides

their pasture. None of the beauty that undoes me

is ancient or original. Everywhere, everything

is built on loss. Not far from here, a farmer

discovered a single elm sapling growing

straight and true toward the sun, splitting

the rotted stump of what we were certain

had already died. Maybe the universe

isn’t finished with us yet. I choose to believe

this is a promise, not a threat.

* Title is a quote from The Little Prince by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

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Tuesday, February 28, 2023

When every day is blursday


Winter finally arrives at StarField Farm

The past few months have gone by in a blur of family stress and change. And even when change is ultimately positive, it is still difficult.

My spouse left the hospital he had worked at for the entirety of his 30+ year career. At my urging, he has taken January and February off to decompress from the traumatic years of covid, among other stresses, before he decides what's next. Which means neither of us have the external markers of time passing. Hence the title of this blogpost.

Despite everything, I have managed to complete the (as yet unnamed) multiverse novel and am deep into its second revision. In the process, I have unlocked the conflicts at the heart of the sequel. Now I'm eager to complete book 1 and move on to drafting book 2.

Book 1 takes place over a few day span in a Boston winter, so in a way, I've been living in those brief moments in time for several years. Blursday, indeed. When I look out the window today, the landscape finally matches my internal sense of place.

Living in the Northeast US, the other way I have always kept track of where I am in time is the march of the seasons. And that, too, has been changing in ways that I find quite disorienting.

In my lifetime (I'll be 60 this year) I have watched the seasons skew, more extreme "100 year" storms, & overall less predictable seasonal weather patterns.

There's already word that there will be no stone fruit in New England this season because of the weather extremes we had earlier in the month - from 50 degrees F to -13 within days.

I am a scifi geek, so I often reflect on the ST:TNG episode The Inner Light where Picard's consciousness is snagged by a memory beacon & he lives a lifetime with a civilization coming to grips with its own extreme climate change as its sun ends up as a supernova. Ah, Science Fiction shining a light on the present since forever.

This is heavy thinking for a beautiful snowy morning in Central Massachusetts, so I will leave you with a haiku:

round bellied birds perch
trees snug in coats of fresh snow
how still the world waits

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Monday, July 25, 2022

The Way Baseball Connects Us

A once-in-a-lifetime experience: Neil & I with David Ortiz on a trip to Cooperstown

My story doesn't start with a raffle ticket we bought in support of David Ortiz's Children's Charity, and organized with the assistance of The Red Sox Foundation, though that's what directly led to the amazing photo posted above. Actually, my story starts with my late father - who grew up playing stickball on the streets of Brooklyn during the depression. A man who became a huge Brooklyn Dodgers fan. Who told me stories of seeing Jackie Robinson play, both in AAA when my father was in Rochester after his WWII service, and also at Ebbets field with the Dodgers.

The only poem my father knew by heart was Baseball's Sad Lexicon by Franklin Pierce Adams. And I can still hear him recite it in my memory.

These are the saddest of possible words:
"Tinker to Evers to Chance."
Trio of bear cubs, and fleeter than birds,
Tinker and Evers and Chance.
Ruthlessly pricking our gonfalon bubble,
Making a Giant hit into a double –
Words that are heavy with nothing but trouble:
"Tinker to Evers to Chance."

I was born after the Dodgers broke his heart and grew up a Mets fan after he switched his allegiance. I was a kindergartner the year of the "Miracle Mets" and my earliest of baseball memories is sitting in the driveway with my Dad, listening to Mets games on the car radio.

I still think a well called game is a thing of beauty. And the sounds of the game bring my father back to me like very little else does.

My connection with baseball is very much tied to appreciating the game as a fan, rather than as someone who played it. Title IX wasn't law until long after my childhood and where I grew up, girls weren't encouraged to play sports. I went to the occasional game in my graduate school days in NYC and then when we moved to Boston in 1990, I was happy to trade one losing team to another and switched my allegiance to the Red Sox.

My children grew up Red Sox fans the way I grew up a Mets fan. The only time we could watch TV during a meal was if a game was on. Car rides equaled games on the radio. My children learned that baseball could break your heart when Nomar Garcioparra was traded.

2004 tied three generations of baseball fans together: My father, retired in Florida, had adopted my team and became a Red Sox fan, me, listening to tight games from the hallway because I was too nervous to watch, and my sons, falling asleep in front of the TV during the late games and demanding to know the score and play by play first thing in the morning.

Somewhere along the way, my husband became a fan as well. Not just of the Red Sox, but like me, of the game itself.

One more brief digression before I get back to 2022 and David Ortiz.

During the Summer of 2010, my eldest son and I stopped at Cooperstown while we were visiting colleges the summer before his senior year in High School. It was the first time at the Baseball HOF for both of us. At a local bookstore, we picked up a copy of Joe Posnanski's book about Buck O'Neil and the Negro Leagues and one of my fondest memories of that summer is my son reading me passages during our trip.

Fast forward to 2022. Our kids are grown and on their own. Baseball is still something that connects us. I'm still an avid fan of the Red Sox and especially love listening to games on the radio. (Have I mentioned that a well called game is a thing of beauty?)

And so my husband buys a raffle ticket. He buys it because we support good causes. We are big fans of David Ortiz and his charity raises money for children's medical care. All of our sweet spots. We have no expectations of winning anything.

And he gets an email that he's won. Not just any prize. The *Grand* prize: a private plane trip for 2 to Cooperstown, traveling with David Ortiz. 3 nights in a hotel. VIP seating at the Induction Ceremony.

Where, not only did we get to cheer for the one and only Big Papi (who is a completely lovely, authentic, and welcoming person), but we also celebrated the inductions of Gill Hodges - a player my father loved, and Buck O'Neil - the player my son and I bonded over more than a decade ago.

This weekend was an experience I will cherish my whole lifetime. Perhaps I will be able to tell some future grandchild that I got to meet Big Papi and add another link in this chain.

The connections between generations are as solid as a perfect double play, as joyful as a blue-sky summer afternoon at the park, and as enduring as the hope of a walk-off home run.

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Saturday, June 25, 2022

No is a Complete Sentence

Patriarchy says: if you don't want to get pregnant, don't have sex.

Patriarchy says: sex is my right to have, not yours to refuse or control.

Patriarchy says: birth control interferes with my right to procreate.

Patriarchy says: if you have a child outside of my approval, you and the child deserve to suffer.

Patriarchy says: your body is my property.

Patriarchy says: your child is my property.

Patriarchy says: my pleasure matters, your suffering does not.

Patriarchy says: you do not matter.

Patriarchy says: you do not exist except as a reflection of my needs.

Patriarchy says: if you cannot serve my needs, you have no purpose.

My answer does not change even as you raise your fist.

-LJ Cohen 6/25/22

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Thursday, May 19, 2022

I hate that this poem is still relevant

I wrote the poem, Shloshim, seven years ago. It was in response to yet another senseless, white supremacist fueled, racist massacre. Frighteningly, I don't precisely remember *which* one it was that drove me to write this.

And now there are still more mourners for lives obliterated by hate.

I wish I had something comforting to say. Perhaps violence has always been the background noise of our society. Which is a terrifying reality to confront.

Shloshim

How long must I count shloshim? I buried
my father twenty-one days ago. In a week
I would have unpinned the torn, black ribbon
for one final time. But every day, the clock
begins anew. Fresh grief winds up
the old. Nine new names to stand for
and recite kaddish. Each one, someone's
beloved. The rituals of loss bring no rest
to the dead. The living bring casseroles, prayers,
and pie to the funeral table. I mean no disrespect--
not to the nine lost to hatred, not to their families,
joined in their death. I don't know what else
to do so I recite Hebrew words I barely read,
transliterated into helpful English. They bring me
a small comfort as I look around at the other
congregants, men and women gathered
here on an early Friday morning so I can publicly
mourn my father. A minyan. One mourner and nine
others. One life for each of the lost. Our little
chapel has no locked doors. Evil could sit here
invisible among us, too, leaving the stricken
survivors to start the count again.

--LJ Cohen, June 20, 2015

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Tuesday, March 22, 2022

An ekphrastic opportunity, redux

Thermonuclearity's Bandcamp page

In March of 2004, I received an email from one of the members of the band, Thermonuclearity. They had read one of my published poems and wanted to know if I'd be interested in a collaboration, writing poems to echo the feeling of their music.

"i represent a two-member band (electronic music) who's currently working on a new album. this is a concept album about the winter and it's called "halcyon days". i would like to know if you would share your gift as a poet with us and if you would write a short poem leading into every track of the album."

While I had written some ekphrastic poems before (poetry that is written in response to a piece of art, typically visual art), I hadn't done so with instrumental music. But I was intrigued and agreed to give it a shot. If they didn't like the work, they didn't have to use it, and I would have a group of poems that otherwise might not have been written.

Over the course of that year, they would send me a music file and I would draft a poem from the emotion in the song. I immersed myself in the sounds they created, finding new depths of meaning on each listen. I sent them the group of poems and hoped that the project was as satisfying for them as it was for me.

By then, I was already drifting from poetry to fiction and spent the next few years working on my first novels.

Every once in a while, I would poke the internet to see if Thermonuclearity had released the album, but I hadn't found anything. I continued to listen to the tracks they had sent me, and they became some of my favorite writing music.

I think I got a few emails from them over the course of the years - both members of the band had families and their priorities took them elsewhere. As the mother of two young children, I absolutely understood that.

Time passed. At some point, I found them on Twitter, and clicked follow.

Last Wednesday, almost 18 years from the day I received their first email, they tweeted something about new music being released shortly. I replied, happy to hear they were still creating. They sent me a private message letting me know that in addition to new work, they are also planning to release the collection (Halcyon Days) we had collaborated on in 2004. Including my poetry.

It's honestly somewhat miraculous that this chain of random circumstances even occurred. From band members in Germany finding a single poem, published in an obscure journal on the internet in 2004, to connecting with me from that poem, and then 18 years later (!), a single tweet shows up when I happen to log in to Twitter that manages not to get lost in a rapidly moving timeline. And that 18 years later, the band is still making music together and going back to release the concept album.

I will certainly let folks know when it's released and where to get it. If you like instrumental/techno music, give Thermonuclearity a listen. Perhaps you will be as entranced as I am with their work.

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Wednesday, March 09, 2022

"What the ice gets, the ice keeps."

"South - Frank Hurley (3)" photo by CineconcertsMP,
used with attribution, and creative commons license, CC BY 2.0

I first heard of Earnest Shackleton from a PBS documentary in 2002. I was so moved by his story, I started working on a poem inspired by it. This is the poem, many times revised and rewritten. I post it in honor of the mission on the occasion of the discovery of Endurance, long believed to be lost in the icy embrace of Antarctica forever.

If you don't know about Shackleton and his mission, it is well worth reading about. His 'successful failure' is studied in MBA programs about leadership, which I totally understand. But what captivated me about the story is that Shackleton promised his sailors he would rescue them and they believed him and he did.

127 days later.

Everyone survived.

What kind of person must Shackleton have been that all who sailed with him had absolute faith in him, even as they lost their ship to the pack ice?

So to the Endurance and her crew, I raise a glass.

"What the ice gets, the ice keeps" (E.S.)

"Men wanted for hazardous journey. Small wages, bitter cold. Long months of complete darkness. Constant danger. Safe return doubtful. Honour and recognition in case of success. " January 1914

I.

He must have had a pull stronger than magnetic north
to draw so many men to his desire. Did his eyes blaze
with passion as he caressed the curves of his ship?
His wife, child, not enough to anchor him. The Pole
stolen, he claims a continent as consolation prize.

II.

He drifts with deadly currents, a man of action
forced to watch land and sun recede; tastes failure
in the brackish water that pools at his crew's feet.

III.

They salvage Hurley’s negatives from the groaning ship.
He must choose only a few, cries as he smashes glass plates
and the pack ice locks Endurance in its embrace. A crack
reverberates through still air. Sled dogs fall silent.

IV.

Sailors savage seals and penguins with greater skill
than killer whales. They reek of fish. Hair, skin,
clothes stiff with spray. They sleep like sardines
in the shelter of two upturned lifeboats, imagine tea,
whiskey, lavender-scented linens. They fear
even death will not rescue them.

V.

A tiny sextant against frostbite, thirst, madness,
Shackleton sails an open boat 800 miles to desolation.
On the glacier he swears to his two companions
the whaling station waits over the next rise. And the next.
He transforms five minutes’ sleep into thirty. Whalers weep
when three wraiths shape themselves from fog.

VI.

In time, the sea calls many of her sailors back --
as if earth alone could not sustain them, as if
Antarctica herself had transfused ice water for blood.

Lisa Janice Cohen
April 4, 2002

http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/shackleton/

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Tuesday, January 11, 2022

Falling to the Level of my Systems

A simple system

I recently hurt myself and was on couch duty for a few days. I didn't have the focus or concentration to read and there is only so much television I could stand, so a friend recommended a few podcasts to me.

Brené Brown has been a kind of hero of mine ever since I saw one of her early TED talks, so I started with her 2 part conversation with James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, on her "Dare to Lead" podcast.

There's a quote that comes from Clear's book that she referred to over and over:

"You don't rise to the level of your goals, you fall to the level of your systems." (James Clear)

And that has been reverberating in my mind and my soul ever since.

It's not like I didn't know about how systems are critical to the functioning of things like safe airflight (preflight checklists, anyone?) and safe surgical procedures (time outs, checklists), and I've long understood that I personally function better with a certain amount of structure in my life.

Hell, I'm great at systems. Erm.. setting them up. Following them? Not so much. If there is an organizational system out there, I've probably tried it. Even believed that it (whichever one I was taking for a spin) would be *the one*.

(Okay - you can stop laughing now.)

And it's also not like I can't be disciplined. I've accomplished a hell of a lot in my life - much of it through sheer stubbornness and dogged optimism. Grind, grit, and goals can only take you as far as the personal walls you hit.

Ooh, that's good. I think I'll repeat that for emphasis - because I'm often slow on the uptake when it comes to my own learning.

"Grind, grit, and goals can only take you as far as the personal walls you hit." (LJ Cohen)

I really believed that the wanting was enough. And that if I wasn't finishing this (%$@!) novel-in-progress, it was secretly because I didn't want it enough. *I* wasn't enough. Or I was too much. Too distracted, too depressed, too broken.

When I ran my physical therapy practice, I had structure. My available hours were limited as I shared an office with another clinician and I had a hard stop time when I needed to pick my children up from school. My work had to fit within those parameters. And it did. And it worked.

Those were the years when I also wrote an hour a day in two 30 minute chunks. Because that what my structure/systems allowed.

I learned a long time ago that limitations can help and unlock creativity, not hinder it. Case in point: I've been in a poetry rut for quite some time, so in November, I asked folks to toss me six random words for me to craft a short poem around. And it led to some remarkable pieces.

This is all to say that for more time that I'd like to admit, I've had no systems to fall back on. The why isn't as important as the fact that with no limits on my time, I drift to mindless scrolling of social media and wallow in quiet self-loathing because of it.

My goals aren't enough. Goals are a pull. I need a push.

My goals aren't enough. Goals are a pull. I need a push. That's systems. Which in my case, means building up better habits. Something the podcast explicitly talks about.

I think I need to read Atomic Habits for more specific support in creating the habits and systems that will let me find my way back to my creativity.

In the meanwhile, I'm going to further lock down my phone. I've already deleted the FB and Twitter apps from it, but there's always the browser. I have it set to so many minutes per hour and I'm going to also block it until midday. (I'm better writing in the morning.) Somehow, I don't abuse social media when I'm at the computer in the same way as I do on my phone.

And maybe that will be enough of a habit and enough of a system, at least for now.

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Thursday, December 09, 2021

Another group of Bespoke Poems

I've written 16 of these poems inspired by #6Words given to me by friends and social media followers. I still have a few sets of prompt words to go. I'm planning to put together a small chapbook of the poems along with the words that inspired them. Keep a lookout on the blog and on my social media posts for the download link. And thank you for following along.

These are all a bit melancholy! I suspect both the prompt words and my mood at the time were responsible. I wonder where the poems would have taken me - using the same words - had I written them a different time. Or if someone else had taken the same words in a different direction...

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Friday, November 12, 2021

Bespoke Poetry, take 2

It's been a great practice to do a daily writing challenge to prompt words. The subconscious is a funny thing. For me, writing is a process of inviting my back brain to make connections and take me places I never would have found otherwise. But I have to trick it to come and play. Having a group of words tossed at me has been a great way to get connected to my deeper self.

Here are some of the recent pieces and the words that inspired them. When I've finished a month's worth of prompts, I'm thinking of putting them together in a free downloadable ebook file. Stay tuned!


Prompt words: summer, (bummer), runner, gunner, sinner, dinner

Prompt words: swerve, atoms, dogs, rain, pockets, bead

Prompt words: eclipse, sharp, marble, soar, whisper, bright

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Friday, November 05, 2021

Bespoke Poetry

You are probably as tired of reading about my difficulty in doing any regular writing for the past few years as I am in saying and living it.

So I won't give any excuses, nor will I make any promises - except this one which I make to myself: I will spend 20 minutes every day engaged with writing. On some days, that will be the multiverse novel I'm fighting with. On other days, poetry.

A few weeks ago, I sent out a tweet asking for folks to give me 6 words that I would weave into a poem.

Want to help me dive back into #poetry ? Reply w/6 words & I'll see what I can do either using them as a prompt or including all 6 in a #bespoke #poem.

*reserves the right not to use words that don't feel right.
*nastiness will be reported/blocked
— LJ Cohen@🏠 (@lisajanicecohen) October 29, 2021

And folks came through.

While I'm not participating in NaNoWriMo, I have been writing more steadily. Here are some of the first poems I've written, along with the words that created them:

For Laura Jane
When I try to wish my way
into silence, fallen branch snap
and leaf litter whisper insist
on conversation. Witness
trees slowly spin stories
in a language I almost understand:
a thousand words for wind and rain,
sun and soil, birds and moss, the tickle
of small creatures against bark
and root. And my clumsy
footfalls; a steady heartbeat.

-Lisa Janice Cohen 11/3/2021

(leaf, star*, rain, spin, whisper, wish)
*I had star in a line that I ended up cutting and didn't realize until I had already posted the poem

11/4/21

In the five centuries between
Father Falloppio's anatomy lessons
and the operation that removed
my ovaries and wayward tubes
I wonder how much wisdom we have accrued.
We still buy tickets to cancer's indifferent
lottery. Celebrate our losings
with extravagant meals--red wine, bitter
greens, ravioli, trying not to think
of rogue cells splitting open
like ripe fungi as we dine.

--Lisa Janice Cohen

(fallopian, wisdom, green, ravioli, indifferent, fungus)

11/5/2021

I drive down roads without signs, streets
so familiar to the locals it would seem strange
to name them. Directions are always a story:
head up the lane a ways, look for the flying
pig on top of a red barn, turn left. Mind
you don't bottom out on the ruts. My survival
skills were made for a different landscape.
The farmer eyes my smile with mistrust,
would never describe his farm, his cows,
their breaths steaming in the chill morning air
as charming. His worry follows me. I fight
the urge to turn back and apologize for everything.

--Lisa Janice Cohen

(up, down, charmed, strange, bottom, top)

If you'd like to play along, tweet or comment with 6 words. (Same caveats apply as in the tweet above).

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Friday, September 03, 2021

"Water is Patient; Water Always Wins"

In August of 2005, we were on our annual holiday to our in laws' home on the eastern shore of the Chesapeake Bay when Hurricane Katrina slammed into the gulf.

The weather on the Bay then was much like it is today - clear, bright, cool - a perfect day heralding fall.

Again, we watch the reporters flocking to destroyed homes, communities without power, places rendered unlivable by the power of weather and water and the unwillingness of a society to face the realities and ravages of climate change.

And very little changes.

The poem I wrote then is as relevant today, albeit with the need to add more named storms to the list.

After the Levee is Breached

Only the lightest puff of air stirs
pennants along the dock. Telltales hang
from luffing sails. In the stillness, bees
stagger between the open throats of thirsty

orchids. When wind and full moon forced
the bay to rise, it scoured the eastern shore.
This time, the great tidal surge gathers
elsewhere. Camera crews rush to film

other places more prosperous, newly drowned.
Watermen haul their catch by hand, chant
a guilty mantra--Hugo, Andrew, Isabel
new storms spin elsewhere. Tonight a front

gathers force; it rends high, thin clouds.
Stars pour through the rift like water.

LJ Cohen, August 2005

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Monday, January 25, 2021

The Solace of Poetry

"Brown bear portrait II" by Tambako the Jaguar is licensed under CC BY-ND 2.0

It feels good to be writing again. The few poems I've written since the turning of the year are baby steps, but I will happily take any progress, no matter how small.

Learning How Not to Be A Bear

I fought to sleep
this whole year away, but living
as a bear is harder
than I thought. Hibernation
takes planning. You can't decide
to hide in bed, covers
pulled over your head. I tried.
My heart and breath refused
to slow. My traitorous
stomach insisted to be fed and what
if I had Rip Van Winkled my way
out of months and months
of boredom and dread. It's bad
enough - the shock of my love's
gray, as if his time had sped
while mine had stayed. I tick
off hours in hashmarks, carved
on my heart, too many spent
in solitary. The days lengthen
and I wonder what world
she will wake to when this bear
can finally abandon her den.

- Lisa Janice Cohen
January 2021

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Monday, July 22, 2019

Morning Walk, Rock Hall

The purple martins mock us

as we stroll past their crowded house.

For once, the dogs ignore them,

intent on sharper smells closer to the ground --

frogs and bunnies, decapitated fish

abandoned by picky osprey. It's easy

to forget how alive the world is. This morning

I read that Iceland has written a love letter

to a lost glacier. Closer to home,

spring torrents have made mud where fields

once ripened with corn. For just an hour,

I would be as tunnel-nosed as my pups,

seeking out the scent-trails in front of me,

the hope of a filled bowl yet to be. Ambition

has ruined us. The dogs are content

to chase a handful of waddling ducks. A thousand

squawking fowl couldn't satisfy their desire to hunt,

could only confuse and terrify these two rescued,

damaged creatures. Desire of a certain kind

can break you. Make you hoard misery

until the chambers of your heart

silt in. Until your blood trickles

where it once flowed unconstrained. I want

the joy of a chase where the bird scolds me

for even trying, where I watch it soar, where I

laugh at how ponderous legs have disappointed me

again. The dogs herd me back to the house, mouths

soft,ears flapping, limbs gliding over the ground

with an ease I may never match. They forgive

my clumsy tugs on their leads, patient

and kind with all my human failings.

--LJ Cohen, July 22, 2019

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Sunday, September 30, 2018

The Potter of Akrotiri

Photos taken by me at the Museum of Prehistoric Thera

The Potter of Akroteri*
She has no patience for the way the wind
whips the hair into her eyes and mouth and binds it
with a leather strap. Her back is broad from digging,
her firm arms wedge the clay free of air, her right leg
drives the kick wheel in a relentless rhythm as a pot blooms
between her capable hands. She rises
from the wheel to ease the ache in her hip, takes a sip
of cool water drawn from the cistern below her shop.
Her assistants roll coils of clay into fat snakes
that swallow their own tails round and round
as amphorae grow tall and straight. Far below in the harbor,
ships bear treasures from Crete, from Egypt, from Turkey.
Her vessels will fill theirs, trading olives and wine
from her beloved island to strangers across the sea.
We are ghosts to one another – this potter and me – we share
only the dust of dried clay and the secret knowledge
of our alchemy. In the museum, docents glare as I stand
close to each display as if they know my secret desire
to hold that delicate cup, to stroke the surface of this burnished pot.
Some were untouched by time, freed whole from the ground
that had sheltered them. Others lovingly pieced together,
archaeologists able to separate fired clay from rock and stone.
I lean in to study the decorations: complex spirals
and tiny swallows, their upswept wings captured
in a single deft brushstroke. These shapes are so familiar.
The belly of her cups will fit my palms exactly, as if
this ancient potter had just emptied her kiln
and set them out for me.

--LJ Cohen September 2018, Thira (Santorin), Greece

*Inspired by our current travels in Greece, my love of pottery, and the recent discovery that a skeleton discovered on Crete with unusual patterns of wear is in fact of a woman master ceramicist.

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Monday, October 02, 2017

Food, Words, Dogs

When I'm at a loss for what to do about the pain of the world, I turn to a few things that keep me centered: food, words, and the comfort of my dogs.

Today is for chopping and freezing more tomatoes and canning applesauce. There is something about preparing food for the future that reminds me there is a future. There will be family meals and laughter and the reminder of a clear summer day or a cool autumn breeze.

I put away the harvest in part because I want to hold to that imagined future day when we will gather with loved ones to feed more than hungry bellies; we will feed souls and nurture our whole beings.

Food is definitely my love language.

And I also turn to words, particularly poetry, during times of crisis and mourning. Sometimes that's reading others' work, sometimes it's writing my own. I can't count the number of times I've read Mary Oliver's "Wild Geese" and received comfort from her assurance:

You do not have to be good.

You do not have to walk on your knees

for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.

You only have to let the soft animal of your body

love what it loves.

This week, I was reminded of something I wrote right after hurricane Katrina tore through so much of the south. We were visiting our in-laws at their home by the Chesapeake Bay in Maryland - the home that they had lost and rebuilt several years earlier in a different hurricane.

After the Levee is Breached

Only the lightest puff of air stirs
pennants along the dock. Telltales hang
from luffing sails. In the stillness, bees
stagger between the open throats of thirsty

orchids. When wind and full moon forced

the bay to rise, it scoured the eastern shore.

This time, the great tidal surge gathers

elsewhere. Camera crews rush to film

other places more prosperous, newly drowned.
Watermen haul their catch by hand, chant

a guilty mantra--Hugo, Andrew, Isabel;
new storms spin elsewhere. Tonight a front

gathers force; it rends high, thin clouds.
Stars pour through the rift like water.

LJ Cohen 2005

The lines that keep running through my head today are these: This time, the great tidal surge gathers/elsewhere. Camera crew rush to film/other places more prosperous, newly drowned.

We seem to only crave the newest tragedy, the freshest disaster. And only until the next surge and the next.

I envy my dogs, especially on days like this. They soak the world up through their senses, find happiness in a warm pool of sunshine and the sound of a familiar voice, the jingle of a car key, the promise of a treat.

We are left to try to make sense of what cannot be understood, to carry heartache piled upon heartache. Is it no wonder I want to feed the world?

May you find and hold to that which brings your comfort and may you be able to share that comfort with others.