Listen to the Mockingbird

It's February. Already the new year is a month old. Here in South Florida that means we are on the cusp of springtime. I know that from more than a decade of experience in wintering in these subtropics, but yesterday the shift in seasons was made manifest by a mockingbird. For the first time this year I heard his aria rise on the wind from atop the parotis palm waving at the marina's walkway below our lanai. That fellow will find a mate soon, I thought. His complex love song continued for two or more lively, lilting minutes, a virtuoso performance of vernal desire. Then he was off to another perch, his brownish black-and-white wings twirling like a whirligig lawn ornament twirling in a stiff breeze. He returns again this morning on his urgent rounds of the condo grounds, oblivious to Hutch and Ellie, our association president and his wife, uncovering the pool below the avian performer in preparation for their daily laps. As I watch them I'm thinking of the wood violets we'll soon be seeing coming into bloom as we hike the local preserves.

Even friends and loved ones back home in Western New York, who so far have enjoyed a relatively mild winter, are noticing spring's immanence: it's the lengthening of days. An email correspondent, John Heiser, a back-country ranger at Theodore Roosevelt National Park in North Dakota, remarked last week that already there are 47 minutes more daylight since the Winter Solstice.

These days of growing light move at their usual fast clip. There aren't enough hours in the day for this full-time poet to keep up with submission deadlines much less escape for a few hours' writing time. That'll come. Meanwhile, I've enjoyed some successes in my craft that I'd like to share with you, hoping you won't find me immodest to note that...

...January saw the publication in vox poetica of the title poem from my new collection, The Ice Decides: Poems of Antarctica. (I ask all my faithful readers who ordered a copy to please be patient. Your copy will be arriving soon, so says the publisher!). This link gives you a sneak preview of what to expect: http://poemblog.voxpoetica.com/2012/01/27/the-ice-decides.aspx...

...My environmental activism continues but has in recent months expanded to include social justice issues. A small indication of this newly-found dimension of concern for my fellow humans -- the 99% -- can be glimpsed in five poems recently published in Poems on the Great Recession. See http://poetsonrecession.blogspot.com/2012/01/karla-linn-merrifield.html and you'll read how my activism twines concern for humanity with concern for the planet. Then jump over to http://www.foothillspublishing.com/2012/id44.htm. Poet-activist-friend Dwain Wilder of Rochester, NY, and I co-edited the new Liberty's Vigil, The Occupy Anthology: 99 Poets among the 99%, now available from that link to FooHills Publishing. The book hit bookshelves on January 15 -- only nine weeks after I first conceived it. My sincere thanks to Dwain, the Czarnecki family at FHP and our fellow 97 poets. It's not to be missed...






...And, yesterday, I received word that two of my poems received Honorable Mention prizes in the Lois Beebe Hayna Awards administered by Poetry West. The two poems are published now in the Winter 2011-2012 issue of PW's The Eleventh Muse. Here's one of the two poems:


At “VV 74 Fate Bell”
Archeological Site


Willingly in thirst
I step through
your red portal.

Here is the only
way, one you had
painted with iron

oxide, bone marrow
and sotol on a limestone
wall beneath a broad

canopy streaked black
with manganese. Such
is the tenacious strength

of your art that
Cretaceous-era rock
parts, canyon enfolds

my body. I succumb.
O my Hunter,
I am your Gatherer

come to decipher
the ochre thread
of your story line

one-hundred-eighty
human generations
later, in a fiery flicker

of shamanic time.
For here, this now,
I am Pecos River Woman,

a trace of yellow
yucca twine, who
binds herself slowly



to your sacred staff.
Willingly in hunger
I receive, retrieve

seeds of your enchanted
genius and do return
from my entrancement

within your ancient
stone to my people,
full of your wild mind.

I then sing of your vivid
petroglyphs on the living
side so all may

remember you, remember our
brief prehistory, and this:
young love’s landing.




Believe it or not, that poem, dating to summer '08, went to 21 editors before being accepted -- with honors, no less.


That's all very good news, but life is such that sad news becomes part of this hopeful pre-spring season. I must pause to reflect...

...on the recent sudden death at 78 of beloved friend and colleague Don O'Neil. Don was a big man -- of stature and spirit -- with whom I was friends for nearly 30 years. We worked together in the '80s and '90s as fellow wordsmiths in the ad biz. While a love of the crafted word brought us together, a deeper friendship forged over the years over many a basket of chicken wings at our favorite Rochester haunt, Beale Street, where we shared a passion for political news, geology, movies, Raymond Chandler mysteries.... In the Irish tradition, Don was a storyteller nonpareil with a rebel soul to boot. He was an iconoclast who reminded me not to mindlessly bow to authority. When he laughed, he bellowed from his expansive belly. Oh, Don, my friend, I miss you so.

About a week later, I learned John Kuchera, another "adland" colleague died. Although John and I had not remained in touch during the years since we both left the insanity of the biz behind, I will always remember him for the creative genius he was. Artist, cartoonist, wit, imp. Kuch, the world has lost one of its most generous spirits. But I find comfort in knowing his art -- all those whimsical Kuch cats among it! -- lives on...on the walls of my home as he does in my heart.

Tonight, I will look to the spring stars and find I doubt not two new ones in the heavens above the Caloosahatchee River that slowly rolls by my North Fort Myers windows to the Gulf of Mexico. Goodnight, Don. Goodnight, Kuch. You shine on.


***

Of Snowbirds and Icebergs

It’s November 2, which is hard to believe. Harder to believe is that it’s currently 61 degrees outside and a cabbage white butterfly just fluttered past my library window, looking a bit like a miniature version of the great egret in the above photo.

But just because it’s a balmy day in Western New York doesn’t mean this snowbird and her husband aren’t ready to head to the sunny, warmer climes of Florida (80 degrees in North Fort Myers as I write) where our condo on the Caloosahatchee awaits. A week from today, we’ll have turned south for a leisurely 1400-mile drive to our subtropical home, stopping along the way to visit friends in West Virginia and in Georgia. I’m packed, ready to go. Roger will get there by the time we’re due to pull out of the driveway.

But meanwhile, we’re busy saying goodbye to friends and neighbors, running a few errands (get those Rx’s filled!), and walking the roads along farm fields now shorn of cornstalks and soybeans. The fields look naked, even more so since the last of the Canada geese have departed for fresh fields, warmer waters.

But right now, my mind’s eye turns even farther south…



…to Antarctica!

That’s because it’s time for me to invite you to order a copy of my new book, The Ice Decides: Poems of Antarctica from Finishing Line Press.

Now, you can travel with me on a journey to the ends of the earth and partake in our many beautiful discoveries in Antarctica.

Maybe you’ve been there and long to see it again (and smell the penguin rookeries). Or maybe it’s on your bucket list and you are scrimping and saving for the expensive expedition. Or maybe you’re an armchair traveler who relishes others’ adventures to the Earth’s far-flung places. Or maybe (except for the movie Happy Feet) Antarctica isn’t even on your mental map, merely a word that means “cold.”

Whatever your outlook, now’s the time to (re)discover the magic of Antarctica – for only $14 (plus shipping). Just order your copy (or copies) of my newest book The Ice Decides: Poems of Antarctica, from Finishing Line Press.

As award-winning poet Beau Cutts points out: “You have never before read a collection of poems about the coldest-highest-windiest place on planet Earth!” But now you can, in this unique collection.

You’ll meet those whimsical (and smelly) penguins and other arctic birds. You’ll chase whales across rough seas. You’ll come to understand that Antarctica is far more “The Blue Continent” than “The White Continent” as you face icebergs the size of city blocks. You’ll even encounter the enchanting green of the island continent – its 500-year-old mosses. And you’ll watch as global warming tightens its grip on the great storehouses of ice.

I hope you’ll want to travel with us across the famed Drake Passage to a land of “beauty, terror, silence,/ the blue awe of Antarctica.”

To entice you, I’ll share one of my favorite poems from the collection:

Penguinissimo


Lo! I’m awake, I think, and blinking.
Because what to my wondering eye
has appeared this bright morning
right outside my cabin porthole?
Penguins! Batches of chinstraps,
gaggles of plump toddling birds
in black berets, black capes,
white bibs and—pink sneakers!
Waddle, hop, waddle, waddle, hop, hop,
sli-i-i-i-ide to the fast-ice edge
for an early hour’s frigid dive.
Make way for pudgy, hungry,
flipper-flapping penguins
and penguins tooting their kazoo voices:
Krill, krill, krill, we’ll get our fill!
And off the briny brink they go—
plop, plop, plop, plop, splash—
into the deep blue smorgasbord,
into the rich Antarctic seas.
Another fine day gets under way
in penguin paradise. Ah, penguin glory!

***

Please order a copy now.

I’ll be frank: Orders placed now will determine how many copies FLP prints—of if they print the book at all. (I need to help FLP sell a minimum 50 books from now through the pre-sale period ending Nov. 23; such are the vicissitudes of small-press publishing these days.)

It’s easy. To order your copy/copies of The Ice Decides, go to this FLP direct link http://www.finishinglinepress.com/product_info.php?products_id=134

I thank you, the penguins thank you and you’ll thank yourself for voyaging with me to “The White Continent.”

And I thank those faithful “fans” who’ve already ordered copies!

Meanwhile, you can enjoy the many pleasures of the new issue of The Centrifugal Eye where I work as assistant editor and book review columnist. You’ll discover a chorus of eloquent poetic voices (including yours truly, if I may be so immodest), book reviews (don’t miss the one for my previous book, The Urn; writer Danielle Blasko does a boffo job of tackling the book) and an interview with and essay by poet Maureen Kingston. Just hop over to http://centrifugaleye.com/ and click on the “New Issue” tab! Plunge into the beauty.

Happy November. See you next time from Florida.

Belated Equinox Reflections

***

Entomologically Correct

Last night the wind
in a rush shifted
south to north swish
goodly wind, tail wind
wing wind,great wind of insects
seeking passage out of Canada
by the legions while there's time
dragonfliers in formation
sporting their dozen spots
monarch butterfliers willy-nilly
dabbing sunlight orange
for crossing Erie’s open waters
in buzz, in flutter
with faith in the genes
of their tiny bodies
today they leap
Point Pelee to Sandusky
Ontario to Ohio
nation to nation

as they depart we marvel
small wonders of evolution
small wonders of migration
so small, so far, this autumn

***

Greetings, friends. Roger and I have returned home from a fifth summer odyssey into Canada replenished from our time at Point Pelee National Park and nearby Wheatley Provincial Park on the north shore of Lake Erie. Hiking, birdwatching (a bald eagle! a black-throated blue warbler!), smooshing around our campsite overlooking a creek and its marsh. And the beautiful insects you see here. We all recognize the monarch but I wonder how many of us have seen one that's tagged as pictured above. Yes, that white dot is a researcher's tag identifying the individual for the record books of monarch migrations. I'd never seen such a thing. Imagine affixing it to that delicate wing.

The other fellow is a twelve-spotted dragonfly. He was a new one on me; I had to look him up in my Audubon Field Guide to Insects & Spiders. He too was heading south.

We watched hundreds of monarchs and thousands of dragonflies of several species wing south over Erie's open waters--a two-hour journey for them. We marveled.

Then we cursed, driven out of camp by driving rain. But, we returned home sated on the beauties of these bugs and their pursuit of their evolutionary imperative.

Small wonders, indeed. An autumn blessing.








And another:

Live from the Third Coast

As I write, a tang of autumn nips the air above Lake Ontario, breezing lightly out of the north carrying scudding gray clouds. A change in the season may be threatening but so hurricanes forecast, no earthquake warnings unsettle my inner landscape. I’m at home.

This vagabond poet has been a homebody this summer, sticking around Ed Rose Shores and venturing out only on short trips to the North Country to work on the cabin where my brother once lived, another beautiful spot on Lake O. Roger and I have made four trips there in recent months and depart tomorrow for three more days of reclamation as we try to return the property to its iconic status: “Rainbow’s End.”

This summer Canada also has beckoned, with three forays into the province of Ontario and one more in the offing in September.

And we’ve shared the power that is Niagara Falls with good, good friends visiting with us from West Virginia. We had a beautiful day to which this photo attests. That’s purple loosestrife in the foreground, an invasive plant we are not supposed to admire. I can’t help myself. The color is so fine. What you can’t see for all the spray below the mighty, roaring falls is The Maid of the Mist, a motorcraft that takes tourists – like the two of us – into the whirlpool maelstrom within yards of the Canadian side of the cascade. (No, we didn’t need passports!) Do it sometime. Thrills guaranteed.

Staying close to home has made me reflect on how much a citizen I am of “The Third Coast” as the Great Lakes are often referred to, a befitting moniker for bodies of water that are truly inland seas. Instead of traipsing off to the American Southwest or up into the Maritimes as in summers past, we stayed home. Home. As Martha would say, “It’s a good thing.”

Still, I turn my sights toward other horizons. First, that return camping expedition to the Canadian Lake Erie Shores, this time with new eyes, Roger’s that is. His two cataract surgeries were successful and his vision immensely improved. (And the reason we didn't travel far this season.) This time around as we watches the birds who will be heading south during this visit, he’ll be able to see them clearly. Anticipated joy!

Then, in early November, we’ll head south ourselves, imitating the warblers and geese. The snowbirds will alight for our second winter in our second home-sweet-home on the Caloosahatchee River of Florida.

But I’ve two-plus months to celebrate life as a Third Coaster and watch the waves roll in on autumn days. That life, today at least, goes something like this:


Third Coast Scherzi Suite,
West to East


I. Gordon Lightfoot’s Lake Superior’s
Superior Prayer for the Sailors
Lost in Geologic Depths


Say Gitchee-Goomee,
say Edmund Fitzgerald, amen.


II. The Great Lakes’ Prettiest Stones
Come from Michigan Shores


Smooth, coraled Petoskey stones
to pocket—rock art, rock-old.


III. On Huron’s Northern Shore,
Granite Underfoot


From native waters
the Canadian Shield rises.


IV. Pelee (ONT, CAN) and Kelley’s (OH, USA),
Limestone Islands in Lake Erie


Migrations o’er glacial
grooves below the shallow sea.


V. Close Range at Dawn, Lit Stem
to Stern on Lake Ontario


Laker, St. Lawrence-bound,
in her holds: iron cargo.


KLM


P.S. Check out my latest online poem at http://qarrtsiluni.com/tag/karla-linn-merrifield/. You can both read the poem and listen to me recite it.

Oh, what a garden of delights

Happy 4th of July (a day early). While not a holiday my husband Roger and I go out of our way to celebrate, especially these days with the idiots in Washington (most of you know whom I mean) playing games with our nation's debt limit, we do enjoy seeing others celebrating at family picnics and town fireworks displays. And we're glad for those who are employed that the federal holiday gives them a day off from the grind of "do more with less."

My 4th of July celebration has always been a very personal one: My maternal grandmother Amelia was born on July 4th some time back in the 19th Century, probably in the 1880s. She was an Austrian immigrant who became a naturalized citizen as quickly as she could and to her dying day was proud of her adopted country. While I don't know her birth date, I know of her pride because my mother always reminded me of her mother's pride on July 4th, adding that "Mimi" as she was called by her American friends and family or "Mutzel" as she was called by her Austrian friends, "was a real firecracker."

So the day has arrived when I honor my Austrian-American grandmother who was a formidable gardener.

Already I've been out in my garden this morning to water, weed and spread mulch around the west-facing garden that I restored earlier this summer.

Restored? Yes. After 10 years of traveling during the summer months, Roger and I are staying home for the most part, taking only a couple short camping trips instead of our season-long journeys to the Canadian Maritimes, the American Southwest, Pacific Northwest....

And because we're staying put, I've had the pleasure to rediscover my inner gardener who's been long neglected along with the flowers and shrubs.

What a joy! One I'd almost forgotten. Planning, nursery shopping, digging, planting, even weeding has been pleasurable -- and then to see my new hosta lilies (four varieties) and blue hydrangea come into bloom. Ahhhh! Grossmutter Mimi's genetic legacy is alive and well. You can take the girl out of the garden, but you can't take the garden out of the girl.

Reclaiming my flower beds has been a healing ritual, too. Aching muscles and dirt beneath my fingernails are small dues to pay for the modicum of peace I've felt working in the earth, making things grow out of the grief I've felt at the loss of my brother in March. As I've turned over the soil, carved out holes in which to settle a lilac bush or a pair of columbines, nestled their roots in the ground, and tamped them securely in their new homes, I've laid to rest some of the anger and pain of having lost my brother to alcoholism at such a young age (63). Following in my grandmother's (and mother's!) footsteps, I turn the trowel to wedge out a stone from my heart so that love for the dead has more room to grow.

***


Preparing Jimmy’s Resting Place


Spring leaps toward summer
and this year after so many
years, I am domesticating
my west-facing garden again,
taming it with hosta lilies,
lilacs, hydrangea, datura.
I perform a cleansing ritual
after one death, hopefully well before
the next deadly inevitability. I dig
in warm earth, drop nasturtium seeds
to give me my season
to accomplish grief
the same way I harvest
misplaced thistles, errant ferns
to reinvent a bed for flowers;
the same way I remove the weeds:
one at a time over time.
Thus, one man gone at a time,
one floral elegy at a time.

First, let me plant my brother’s song
by the arborvitae in the Poet’s Corner
paved with limestone lakestones,
that polished dolomite might anchor ghosts.
Let me perch a plaster boy atop the rocks,
its faux verdigris chipped,
its cupid’s wings and toes missing.
This June may I be his little sister again,
a gardener of brotherly love, but this time
I come to pray for broken garden gnomes
one day at a time, every, every, every
miraculously verdant day at a time.

***

Let the fireworks begin! I'll be my own self-made firecracker, sizling with delight in an explosion of blooms.

Revising the Survey Map of Grief

***




You are looking at a picture of an asset: a shorewell. This one is located on my property on Barracks Lane in Cape Vincent, the place we used to call Rainbow's End that, as of today, is up for sale, flaws and all. Some items will be repaired, some we'll leave for the next owners, but, by all means, the worst will be cleaned up well before it changes hands..

So, at this juncture in my life, what I find I'm doing is preparing to part with a huge chunk of my life, one that dates back to 1981, when my brother and I bought the parcel together. Egad, thirty years of history there between my brother and me! I say farewell to this stretch along Lake Ontario just as I’m saying goodbye to Jimmy: sadly.

You can gather from the photograph that it's a rocky landscape. Literally, figuratively. My brother's death in March still leaves me, heading into late May, with more clean-up work -- a considerable amount.

That's why I need a break. My beloved husband Roger (whose born a great burden too) and I are skipping town, leaving the country for seven days, six nights. On Sunday morning after seven weeks of what feels like constant "estate caca," we're going camping in Ontario, along the northern, provincial Lake Erie shoreline.

Beach walks, woodsy hikes, a lighthouse or two, campsite chats and "library hour," poems—and sleep. No computer. No Internet. No cell phone. I'm aiming to be blissfully disconnected from that sorrowful world we've been contending with.

This morning before I got going on the details of carpenters and carpeters, I fingered through old files in search of an old poem, one that's never been keyboarded into my laptop. I found it.

It concerns the erstwhile Rainbow’s End. It's from a happier time at the waterfront land my brother and I once owned together. It’s proof: Once there was magic there.

***


Rainbow’s End


Come to this land for moonrising
Come when leaves in their first week of life
and birds on their first day of flight
listen to dusk then last light of day
Behold! Witches’ hair floats in the misty cove
Herb-Roberts and silverweed grow at shoreline
They shall be as omens
portending unto Ontario this hour
You will heal me, Sisater Water
You will hear me, Mother Earth
and I too will listen to darkness
Now I speak night hawk
I speak snowy owl.
I am the voice wavelapping
for now is the time for answering
now when thoughts follow the Milky Way
and ideas with the Northern Lights glimmer
our tellings in the stars

Out there is the Universe where I am here


***

Let there be some joy this rainy spring.

Karla

Goodbye Caloosahatchee River, Hello Lake Ontario

Our days in Florida wind down as we prepare to depart on Sunday for our home in the north. I'm reluctant to pack up and head out, but know it's part of our cycle as it is the flocks of birds we see heading north, including a flock of sandhill cranes yesterday we heard but could not see upriver just a short stretch. Spring, of course, has long come to Florida. It did not take the Vernal Equinox this week to make its presence known.


Springtime along the Caloosahatchee


Two male cardinals call out
from adjacent territories in the palmettos
earnest, persistently cheering.
The subtropical forests sirs
with the crimson song of Floridian dawn.
Their scarlet duet summons
the sun into my eyes.
I see red; I blush.

***

In an hour or so, Roger and I will head out on the river in our kayaks for a final paddle into the oxbow among the mangroves. As always, it will be interesting to see what birds appear along the edges and milling about in the shallow, quiet waters.

That sleepy neck of the river -- too shallow for speed boats, but ideal for kayaks -- reminds me, as if I needed any reminder, that my brother, James Karl Merrifield, is at peace.

I flew home to the Rochester area earlier this month, word having come from Jimmy's ex-girlfriend who was his health-care proxy, that my brother was literally on his death bed and I'd better come quickly. I did. And was with him alongside faithful Patti when my brother died...and went on to the great Whatever. The peace like a river he could not find in his shortish life (he was 63) surely he has now. And that thought helps me maintain my own peace.

***

Wishing all of you the joys of spring. The sprouting daffodils, the raucous voices of Canada geese plying the skies in wavering vees over the fields, the hint of warmth in the air.... All are reason for hope.