Nature Nearby

Tags

Beetles, birds, Hermit adoptee, Nature, Poetry, Reclusive

For New Mexico, the month of May is anything but merry. Nature “red in tooth and claw”as the saying goes. Last month, four wildfires merged into a giant blaze. The monster conflagration has consumed over 260,000 acres, including forest, wildlife, and homes. As fire information officer Ryan Berlin said last week, “We need help from Mother Nature to shut the wind down and a little rain.” Sadly, the wind rages on, and there is little rain in sight. Nature is on a rampage, reminding us that we must move away from fossil fuels. In the microcosm, however, there is much to cherish.

I’m re-reading books in my personal library, one of which is The Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson. As enchanting as the first time I discovered her! She captures beauty in the small things. Dickinson, who became a recluse, is one of the most original and passionate poets in American literature. Her profound insights into nature and life have fascinated readers for over a century.

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) guarded her poems against publication during her lifetime.

A Bird, came down the Walk
by Emily Dickinson

A Bird, came down the Walk –
He did not know I saw –
He bit an Angle Worm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw,

And then, he drank a Dew
From a convenient Grass –
And then hopped sidewise to the Wall
To let a Beetle pass –

He glanced with rapid eyes,
That hurried all abroad –
They looked like frightened Beads, I thought,
He stirred his Velvet Head. –

Like one in danger, Cautious,
I offered him a Crumb,
And he unrolled his feathers,
And rowed him softer Home –

Than Oars divide the Ocean,
Too silver for a seam,
Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon,
Leap, plashless as they swim.
*******
Join author Elaine Pinkerton for Monday Blogs on adoption, hiking and the writing life. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter (@TheGoodbyeBaby)  Check out her newest novel The Hand of Ganesh. Discover  adoptees Clara Jordan and Dottie Benet as they quest to find Dottie’s birthparents. If you are in Santa Fe, you are invited to attend my official book launch on Friday, June 10, 5 p.m. at St. John’s College/ Jr. Common Room. Or, you can order The Hand of Ganesh from Amazon or http://www.pocolpress.com. Thanks for reading!

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Poetry Live: May it soon Return

Tags

Acceptance, adoption, Adoption recovery, Attitude adjustment, Coleman Barks, Emotional journeys, Hope, Memory, Performance, Perspective, Poetry, Rumi, Self-realization

The pending new year is filled with promise. With the development of a Corona virus to end the pandemic, we will, hopefully, be able to join live audiences. Zoom will still be around, of course, but there will be other options. I can imagine a time when we will sit with others, in person, to share music, movies, dance and theater performances. I am ready to adopt and embrace that time. Lately, I’ve been remembering Coleman Barks, the famous translator of Jelaluddin Rumi. In the past, Barks regularly came to Santa Fe. His show, “Rumi Concert—A Feast of Poetry, Humor, Music, Dance & Story,” offered a mesmerizing combination of poetry recitation by poet/professor Coleman Barks, music by David Darling and Glen Velez and dancing by Zuleikha, international Storydancer. And it led me to offer you, dear Reader, my favorite Rumi poem.
The following masterpiece fits my topic because the adoptee’s journey is about being at home in ones own skin.
***************************************************************************
The Guest House
This being human is a guest house.
Every morning a new arrival.
A joy, a depression, a meanness,
some momentary awareness comes 
as an unexpected visitor.
Welcome and entertain them all!
Even if they are a crowd of sorrows,
who violently sweep your house 
empty of its furniture,
still, treat each guest honorably.
He may be clearing you out 
for some new delight.
The dark thought, the shame, the malice. 
Meet them at the door laughing and invite them in.
Be grateful for whatever comes 
because each has been sent
 as a guide from beyond.– Jelaluddin Rumi,

********************************************************************** Although he wrote seven centuries ago, the Persian poet, theologian, and Sufi mystic Rumi provided insights that serve us well today. The “guests” are emotions and thoughts to which one awakens each morning. Rumi advises welcoming them all rather than disdaining some as unwelcome pests and others as “right” and correct. It is true that we enjoy those guests that empower, buoy us up, and make us feel successful, capable, happy. But as I’ve traveled the adoptee’s road to discovering who I really am, I’ve found that we need to accept all the feelings and learn to live with them.
The emotions that appear in our personal guest houses can, after all, serve as guides from beyond.

Looking at the world through adoption-colored glasses.

Welcome to Fall!

Tags

adoptee, Autumn, Dealing with Adoption, English Romantic Era, John Keats, Poetry, recovery, Seasons, University of Virginia

For today’s post, I’m bringing forth a poem I’ve loved ever since studying it as an English major at the University of Virginia. This ode speaks to one at many levels; for me—don’t ask me just how— it ties in to the theme of my blog an adoption journey.
As time unfolds, we adopt and embrace each season. During the current pandemic era, I’ve been revisiting my favorite literature. John Keats, who lived from 1795-1821, created some of the most beautiful poetry of the Romantic Era. This tribute to the season has been called “the most serenely flawless poem in English.” Enjoy.

Sunrise in Late September

Ode to Autumn

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;

To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease;

For Summer has o’erbrimm’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twinèd flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;
20
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—

While barrèd clouds bloom the soft-dying day

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river-sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Join Elaine on alternate Mondays for reflections on Adoption and Life

Poetry Monday: Nature up Close

Tags

Beetles, birds, Hermit adoptee, Nature, Poetry, Reclusive

Note: Though the coronavirus has not disappeared, the world seems to be “opening up for business.” Many folks are now out and about However, some of us (including yours truly) are basically stay-at-homes. For me, this makes sense. I’m completing a novel, The Hand of Ganesh, and the best way to move forward is to stay put. Also, there’s more time to follow beloved pursuits…I’m re-reading books in my personal library, one of which is The Selected Poems of Emily Dickinson. As enchanting as the first time I discovered her! Emily Dickinson, who became a recluse, is one of the most original and passionate poets in American literature. Her profound insights into nature and life have fascinated readers for over a century.

May Flower

Pink, small, and punctual,
Aromatic, low,

Covert in April,

Candid in May,

Dear to the moss,

Known by the knoll,

Next to the robin

In every human soul.

Bold little beauty,

Bedecked with thee,

Nature forswears

Antiquity.

Emily Dickinson (1830-1886) guarded her poems against publication during her lifetime.

A Bird, came down the Walk
by Emily Dickinson

A Bird, came down the Walk –
He did not know I saw –
He bit an Angle Worm in halves
And ate the fellow, raw,

And then, he drank a Dew
From a convenient Grass –
And then hopped sidewise to the Wall
To let a Beetle pass –

He glanced with rapid eyes,
That hurried all abroad –
They looked like frightened Beads, I thought,
He stirred his Velvet Head. –

Like one in danger, Cautious,
I offered him a Crumb,
And he unrolled his feathers,
And rowed him softer Home –

Than Oars divide the Ocean,
Too silver for a seam,
Or Butterflies, off Banks of Noon,
Leap, plashless as they swim.
*******
Join author Elaine Pinkerton for Monday Blogs on adoption, hiking and the writing life. Follow her on Facebook and Twitter (@TheGoodbyeBaby) Comments are invited. If you’d like to submit a guest blog post (subject to review), please send an email proposal. Thanks for reading!

Calling all Writers: Santa Fe, New Mexico

Tags

Benefit, Children's Author, Native American, New Mexico, Poetry, Santa Fe, Writers Community

POET LUCI TAPAHONSO HEADLINES ANNUAL DINNER

Two New Mexico Writers Awarded Grants

Luci Tapahonso will speak at the 2019 Writers’ Dinner

Thursday, March 28 at 5:30 pm La Fonda on the Plaza, Santa Fe

Acclaimed poet Luci Tapahonso delivers the keynote address at the 3rd Annual New Mexico Writers Dinner on March 28, in Santa Fe, where two New Mexico writers will be introduced as the first recipients of grants created to nurture aspiring writers.

Tapahonso, of Santa Fe, served as the inaugural Poet Laureate of the Navajo Nation, 2013-2015. She is the author of three children’s books and six books of poetry. In 2018, she was selected for a one-week Artist Residency at Hedgebrook Writers Retreat, Whidbey Island, Washington, and received a Native Arts and Culture Foundation $20,000 Fellowship. Tapahonso recently served as a judge for Poetry Out Loud, New Mexico’s high school poetry competition, and was selected as “2016 Best of the City-Our City and State’s Prolific Authors,” by Albuquerque The Magazine.

A native of Shiprock, New Mexico, Tapahonso has shared her poetry at various institutions worldwide, including Harvard University, Gallup (NM) Central High School, Kenyon College (Ohio), the Tbilisi International Literature Festival in the Republic of Georgia, and “Creativity Week” at the University of New Zealand at Auckland and Wellington. She wrote the script for the exhibition, Creating Tradition: Innovation and Change in American Indian Art at the American Heritage Gallery at Walt Disney World’s Epcot.

Tapahonso earned an MA in English from the University of New Mexico, and played a key role in establishing the Indigenous Studies Graduate Studies Program at the University of Kansas. She is Professor Emerita of English Languages and Literature at the University of New Mexico.

This year’s dinner will introduce two New Mexico writers, poet Sylvia Rains Dennis, El Prado, and children’s book author Laurie Goodluck, Albuquerque—the first to be awarded grants by the New Mexico Writers organization, launched in 2017. (See notes below.)

Proceeds from the annual dinner fund the grants for aspiring New Mexico writers. Grants may be used to support their work, including tuition for writing programs, mentorship, travel, and research.

The annual New Mexico Writers dinner brings together a diversity of writers, poets, playwrights, and journalists from around the state, along with literary arts supporters, including librarians, booksellers, editors, and publishers. It is an occasion to celebrate the writing craft and literary arts that contribute to the richness of New Mexico arts, and to raise money to aid aspiring writers in reaching their goals.

This year’s grant recipients:

Laurel Goodluck of Albuquerque, who is publishing her first children’s picture book. She is “…determined to continue to improve (her) skill as a writer and loos forward to being able to produce art where all children can see themselves in books.

Sylvia Rains Dennis of El Prado, a poet, native ecologist, and educator who will use her grant to restore links to natural surroundings as well as to her extended New Mexico community. Her credo: “The rivers, mountains, meadows, shrub-steppe, and sustainable farmlands are inseparable to who we are.”

Note: a silent auction precedes the writers’ dinner. Over 20 prominent writers, poets, and agents will offer “coffee and conversation” sessions to the highest bidders. All money earned from the auction goes toward the 2020 New Mexico Writers grants program.

 

To purchase tickets or for more details, visit nmwriters.org.

************************************************

Join Elaine Pinkerton on alternate Mondays for reflections on adoption, hiking, writing and life in the Southwest. Her novel Clara and the Hand of Ganesha, a sequel to All the Wrong Places, is a scheduled for publication in 2021.

 

Adoptee’s Annual Shakespeare Contest

Tags

adoptee, Adoption recovery, Contest, Love. Mortality, Poetry, Quotations, Seasons, Shakespeare

FOUR HUNDRED YEARS OLD! April marks the BIRTHDAY of great English poet and

Remembering Shakespeare on April 23

playwright, William Shakespeare. For me, it means ADOPTING SHAKESPEARE- HIS LANGUAGE, HIS PLAYS, HIS SONNETS, and you’re invited to join in. On Saturday, the Sweet Swan of Avon (who lived from April 23, 1564-April 23, 1617) turns 400! To celebrate Shakespeare’s Birthday, please send (via Twitter, to @TheGoodbyeBaby) your favorite Shakespearean quotations, thereby entering my annual Shakespeare contest.   Quotation competition takes place in the Twitterverse. To be considered, send your quotations via the Internet,  posting them on Twitter.

Sonnet 73 is one of my favorites in the Bard’s magnificent canon. The narrator speaks of the ravages of time on one’s physical well-being and the mental anguish associated with moving further from youth and closer to death. The “death,” point out critics, may be not may be the end of life but rather, the demise of youth and passion. Beginning when I first read this poem in a college literature class,  I’ve appreciated it more each year. Sometimes I focus on the narrator’s sadness, other occasions on the tenderness and love. Read Sonnet 73 aloud and see what resonates with you.

Upon those boughs which shake against the cold,
Bare ruin’d choirs, where late the sweet birds sang.
In me thou see’st the twilight of such day,
As after sunset fadeth in the west,
Which by-and-by black night doth take away,
Death’s second self, that seals up all in rest.
In me thou see’st the glowing of such fire
That on the ashes of his youth doth lie,
As the death-bed whereon it must expire
Consum’d with that which it was nourish’d by.
This thou perceivest, which makes thy love more strong,
To love that well which thou must leave ere long.
-William Shakespeare

At the contest’s end (TBA), copies of Shakespeare scholar Robin Williams’ “The Shakespeare Papers” will be mailed to the four best entries. As the song goes, “Brush up on your Shakespeare…start quoting him now.” My contest runs through May 1.

*****************************************************************

Author Elaine Pinkerton posts bi-weekly about adoption, hiking, and life. Comments are welcome.

 

 

Haiku Monday

Tags

adoption, birds, Flowers, haiku, healing, Moon, Poetry, Seasons, Snow, Sun

Note from Elaine: I’m in the final stages of editing a novel (All the Wrong Places) to be published in late 2016 or early 2017. The process has so consumed me, today’s post, one of my favorites, is a repeat.  My goal for this new year is to focus on gratitude for everything. I’ve flipped the script, from anger to appreciation. Understanding at the heart level has come about after years of searching and reinvention. As an adopted person who’s “adopted” many routes to healing, I’ve found that reading poetry is a balm. It is with great delight that I re-publish these haikus by my poet friend Roberta Fine.
Twelve Graces of 2014

Above the Clouds

January
Baldy’s white cap thins
Brown skull showing through the white
Waiting for a storm.
February
Fresh snow on Sangres
Opal tinted at sunset
Glow fading slowly.
March
Lady hawk surveys
White fields from catalpa tree
Great head swiveling.
April
Buried bulbs revive
In frozen lifeless garen
Reaching for the sun.
May
Clinging to twin trees
Raven pair tear at pine cones
Then leave together.
June
White threads vein mountain
All that’s left of winter snow
Garden pants for rain.
July
Fledglings line up
To take a turn at feeders
Lone bird pecks at ground.
August
Ravens’ raucous call
Splitting summer morning peace
Dewdrops shine on leaves.
September
Head held high, lone rose
Surviving frosty warning.
Someone’s chopping wood.
October
Tawny gold valley
Flaunting bold farewell to sun’s
Declining power.
November
Red chrysanthemums
Capturing sun’s chilly fire
In sundown’s last glance.
December
Fuzzy moon peering
Down through tree’s bare black branches
Suggests snow tonight.
********************************************************************************

HAIKU-short poems that use words to capture a feeling or image of nature, beauty, or a particular sensory moment.. They are usually written as three lines: the first contains 5 syllables, the second line 7 syllables, the third line 5 syllables.
_________________________________________________________________________
Poet Roberta Fine lives and writes in Santa Fe, New Mexico. Finding inspiration from

Once Again, It’s Poetry Monday

Tags

adoption, Beginnings, Dealing with Adoption, Endings, English Romantic Era, Finding Home, Harvest, John Keats, Poetry

It is possible that I may always be searching for adoption recovery. Does this quest never end? Maybe the yellow brick road leads nowhere? Perhaps, as Dorothy discovers

Escaping is sometimes the best way to find oneself.

in The Wizard of Oz, there is no place like home? In the case of the adoptee, it seems necessary to come home to oneself. To do that may require devious methods, even escaping. Today, I’m proposing that escapism is not only allowed but beneficial. Rather than further lamenting my lack of completing the adoption recovery “final exam,” I’m celebrating the end of warm days and the prelude to Winter. Revisiting a past literary love, I summon British poet John Keats.

John Keats, who lived from 1795-1821, created some of the most beautiful poetry of the Romantic Era. His tribute to Fall has been called “the most serenely flawless poem in English.” Read, imagine, and savor…

Autumn is a great time to lose oneself in the world of poetry.

Ode to Autumn
by John Keats

SEASON of mists and mellow fruitfulness,

Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;

Conspiring with him how to load and bless

With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;

To bend with apples the moss’d cottage-trees,

And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;

To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells

With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,

And still more, later flowers for the bees,

Until they think warm days will never cease;

For Summer has o’erbrimm’d their clammy cells.

Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?

Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find

Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,

Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind;

Or on a half-reap’d furrow sound asleep,

Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook

Spares the next swath and all its twinèd flowers:

And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep

Steady thy laden head across a brook;
20
Or by a cyder-press, with patient look,

Thou watchest the last oozings, hours by hours.

Where are the songs of Spring? Ay, where are they?

Think not of them, thou hast thy music too,—

While barrèd clouds bloom the soft-dying day

And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;

Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn

Among the river-sallows, borne aloft

Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;

And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;

Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft

The redbreast whistles from a garden-croft;

And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.

Join Elaine every other Monday for reflections on adoption and life.

Poetry Monday

Tags

adoptee, adoption, Adoption Blues, Invisible wounds, memories, Poetry, recovery, Robert Frost

“When we are tired, we are attacked by ideas we conquered long ago.”
― Friedrich Nietzsche

“Even the darkest night will end and the sun will rise.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

It seems that no matter how far I’ve come, the ghosts of my “adoption past,” unbidden, come back to haunt me. What to do about the attack? I realized that it might be a good idea to do some re-naming. Instead of “Blue Monday,” I’m choosing to call today “Poetry Monday.” The choice of whether or not to go with the painful memories or to push through them and then move on is always available. Pushing, shoving, dislodging, climbing up out of the depths. Along those lines, I offer you a poem that has provided me with great solace throughout the years…
The Road Not Taken
By Robert Frost
Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Do you recall roads not taken in your life? What choices and twists of fate have shaped your destiny?

Laura and her Mission

Tags

adoptee, Adoptee Recovery, Birth Family, Donations, healing, Helping Recovery, Korea, Origins, Poetry, roots, Searching

In a few months, 25-year-old Korean-American adoptee Laura Wachs will be traveling to Korea in search of her birthparents. She longs to  learn firsthand about her cultural heritage. Beyond that, she is launching a campaign to help other Korean adoptees.

Korea, the homeland that Laura has never seen.

Laura was adopted when she was six months old. As a young girl growing up in Seattle, she was told only that her birthmother was unwed, very young and wanted to give her infant daughter the chance for a good life. “Basically, that (a good life) was the outcome,” says Laura. “However, there are many questions about my origins that I need to research.”
In addition to her own quest, Laura is making great strides toward helping other Korean adoptees. Though donations gained primarily through a Kickstarter fund, she will be using art and poetry, mediums that have helped her in healing from the wounds of adoption and in leading a more authentic life. Her plan is an ambitious one, involving a workshop for Korean adoptees, a show of their artistic creations and the publication of two books.
The project is titled ‘The Voices of Korean Adoption.’ It will showcase poets from around the world who were adopted from Korea. Laura has raised nearly half of the required $10,000 needed to obtain the grant that will allow her to complete the project. She has a deadline of April 28th to raise about $6,000.
Editor’s Note:  After talking with Laura, I donated to this incredibly worthy cause. Laura has succeeded in previous art and poetry nonprofit projects and is well qualified to bring her plan to fruition. As an adoptee who was able to meet my birthparents, I know the value of such reunions.
Please join me in supporting ‘The Voices of Korean Adoption’
Contact: Laura Wachs
206-819-6398
laura_wachs@hotmail.com

Laura feels hopeful that donations will make her project a reality!