And then peace

I'm at the age now where passings are becoming a norm.
Friends lose their parents,
their siblings,
their spouses,
uncles and aunties.
Sometimes I know the person who leaves,
often I don't.
Increasingly, I feel like their losses
are harbingers,
of our own ends drawing nearer.

I look at life and its multitude of unfinished tasks,
and think that perhaps passing is indeed peace.
Your work is done forever,
there is no one else left to impress,
nothing else that can be done.

We are not allowed, however, to think like this.
We wake up with an embrace of the sun,
and shout ourselves out of bed,
vowing to make the most of every new day.
We ignore the fact that we are moving a little more slowly,
tiring a little more easily, remembering less
with each passing day.

Three days

Tonight we will wish for a calm night for Goldilocks.
We decided -- after three days -- to stop force-feeding her tonight.
She was born small and weak,
rejected by her mother.
Had she been human, expensive state-of-the-art medical technology might have saved her.
But she was not human.
The best we could do was force-feed her milk from her mother
via a bottle.
She had no suckling instinct,
and could not hold anything in.
But she had verve.
I think about life, and how we complain about it sometimes,
and I think about what life gives you when you only get three days of it.

She got ...
birth and tongue licks from her mother, cleaning her up in straw;
milk from a bottle every one or two hours;
a chance to wear a goat sweater;
a night in the house near the space heater;
lots of hugs, reiki, and prayers.
She got a day in the field under a brilliant sun
to soak in Vitamin D.
She got a kid brother who nibbled her ears,
licked her face,
and suckled her mouth, perhaps in an effort
to teach her the ropes.
She got held by two humans,
visited by three cats.

She gave ...
life and focus to her human parents, who tried to keep her alive;
a reason to warm milk every one or two hours;
a lesson in how to put on a goat sweater.
A new reason to break out the down comforter,
lots of reasons to offer hugs, reiki, and prayers.
Time outdoors under a brilliant sun
to hold her and receive Vitamin D.
Sadness, yet hope
that she might still yet figure out how to take food.
A short life with many memories
for us to call up.

On the Sidelines

After a day of waiting to be of assistance,
I am exhausted.
Why? Good question for the distant mother to answer.
Didn't carry the babies, the goats did.
Didn't hatch the eggs, the hens did.
Not administering direct care,
just waiting in case I am needed.
Mama Doe refuses to let a runt suckle,
so the man does the milking,
the heating, and the bottle feeding,
trying to get the little runt goat to drink
without being forced.
I wait on the sidelines,
absorbing his hard work, stress, and fatigue,
while realizing there's work of my own left to do.
That's the job of support,
always waiting
and ready, just in case.

The farmer's wife

(I was fairly sure that a Facebook post that I made earlier on this day would evolve into the poem for the day. It had what I felt were rhythm, humor, and pathos. What was uncertain was a title. As I thought titles, my memory called up the childhood song "Farmer in the Dell" and the line "The farmer had a wife." We don't know much about the wife. A lot of good fiction of the late 20th and early 21st centuries is based on the stories of characters mentioned but never given a face or a name, much less a voice. Hopefully, this poem doesn't take anything away from the farmer -- who works very very hard. Hopefully, it just puts forth a story of the wife.)

The Farmer's Wife
This day did not unfold as I had planned for it to. 
Three baby goats were born to one mother last night.
This meant the farmer got a crash course
in learning how to teach one to drink 
-- not from an udder but from a bottle. 

I decided I would work from home today, 
thinking I could help the farmer 
and attack the mountain of to dos that lay ahead of me 
in front of the fire,
having forgotten that he might be too busy to build a fire,
having forgotten that workplace activities were rife today --
the two major monthly meetings that I'm expected to attend,
oops, forgot all about them.

At home, I fretted and futzed,
and thought an invite I'd gotten
to join a board for an organization with a mission that I cared about deeply.
I washed dishes and
shelled Painted Mountain corn from 2014 that we will eat through 2016 and maybe beyond and
thought about farming for the next seven generations.
Meanwhile, the little runt kid shivered in the barn
so we held her to give her our body warmth and 
wrapped her in a "baby goat sweater"
made from the sleeve of an old sweatshirt. 

Tonight we will eat leftovers of a chicken we raised ourselves
and make a toast to our lives as farmers.
Perhaps we might also make a toast to being a professor,
to the sixth anniversary of joining the radical college 
where I work my "day job."
That work will resume tomorrow.

What a road we have run.

Re-purposing

Last year's weeds create this year's tomatoes.
Apt for those who compost.
What about others?
Is this a case of weed and seed,
an inner city answer to crime,
at least one that the GOP instigated?
Or something else?

Weeds a nuisance, a threat.
Weed out the bad, seed in some good.
Might it be possible that weeds serve a purpose?
That they allow pests a food source
so that the fruits growing from plants
that we seeded
are left unharmed?

Weeds build soil,
when treated with respect.
They repurpose,
like hip-hop, they build
from junk
something entirely new.

Lives get blown to fragments.
That connotes war, violence, hatred.
Weeds rebuild.
It starts with a spade, some dirt, and
a return to the earth.

Tests of stamina

Today was the 18 miler.
Five weeks before 26.2.
I remember the 18 milers
as tests of stamina
and pacing.
One year I went out too fast
in an 18-mile race and was passed
at mid-point by those whom I had passed earlier.
Damn!
Another year, I got to 18 in a marathon
and my legs cramped up. I thought about dropping out,
but I'm not the type who drops out.
Gels, water, sports drinks, and banana bites
got me to the finish line,
where I stumbled again as I threw up my hands
in a victory salute.
Today was training.
It was sunny but cold,
head winds at times,
hills I hadn't planned to encounter --
the result of sudden, whimsical changes of route.
An achy right heel, chafing around the breastbones,
and a stiff neck accompanied me.
We took it slow, walked when necessary,
and generally had fun.
Yet at mile 17,
I had to remember, what is the reason for doing this ...
again?what the long run was really about.

Finally, watching The Force Awakens

Long day,
that seemed revitalizing,
and tiring
ends with a live stream of the movie
that everyone else watched in December.
The Force Awakens,
on the screen
and in life, perhaps.
Predictable plot,
with unanticipated twists and turns.
Like life,
a script that we read
but refuse to adhere to.

Taxing situation

We grow food,
and invest in new soil.
We started to sell some of it
in 2015.
Tax time arrives.
There is a Schedule C
that has a space to deduct expenses
for paper shredding
but no line for seeds.
Then, there is Schedule F.
A unique form,
set up for farmers only,
who make money
on food they grow
on their own.

Slow Transitions

(Inspired by the appearance of chives in April, and the merits of food saved year round)

Dinner tonight was risotto.
It included
arborio rice, of course, from Italy;
chicken broth, made from the carcass of a chicken who once graced our yard;
mushrooms and sausages from local farmers;
dehydrated tomatoes from our harvest last summer;
spaghetti squash strands and green beans, frozen from two years past,
a leek from a small local farmer,
and chives,
fresh picked today.

Before slow food,
risotto was what you ate on a fancy night.
Store bought vegetables and meats paired with
perhaps broth in a can
shortened the prep, and
made a meal that was yummy but lacking.
Slow food changes the equation.

No fancy night, here.
We had leftover broth,
broth we didn't want to freeze and forget about,
broth that only would last in the refrigerator
five to seven days.
Broth is the result of a chicken
cut up and cooked into 1-3 meals before the carcass
goes into water and becomes,
meals four and five.
If there's a whole chicken in your diet every 10 days,
risotto will be more frequent.

Garlic harvested in July.
Squash picked and preserved in August.
Beans harvested in September.
Tomatoes dehydrated in October.
Chives fresh as of today.
Call it risotto of the year's seasons,
summer unwilling to yield to fall,
fall holding its own through winter,
winter not ready to recede into spring,
and the new season.

Grit

(Shameless rip-off, in some ways, but runners who also are writers find insights in the oddest of places. The idea of grit comes from a blog on running. As always, running seems to apply to everything else we are trying to do in life.)

Grit
The extra ingredient --
To make it through the Boston marathon,
or any other marathon,
provided you're not injured,
assuming you've trained.
To push through the last hump of negotiations for tenure,
or any other life milestone,
provided you're scandal free,
assuming you've worked.
To be able to celebrate life on a farm,
or any other dialogue
with land,
provided you're working land,
assuming you're free.
One running adviser reports:
Consistency is one piece.
Training is one piece.
Motivation two pieces
Grit, the sugar that sprinkles on top.

Kidding

After the cold snap, a thaw
Two goats, heavy with child, build nests and nuzzle noses to palms
in their blankets of straw.
Online calculators predict a birth tomorrow,
and another one Friday.
We watch and we hope --
that it will be smooth,
that the kidding -- the birthing -- will be seamless,
that the new kids -- the babies -- will be cute.

Hens flap up to the highest of haystacks and lay eggs in new nests up there.
Others find comfort near the goats,
while one goes broody in the hen house.
Fifty two -- or so -- chicks cluck crazily under two heat lamps.
Spring has arrived.
For kids, we wait.

Haiku to snow

Under April snow
garlic sprouts huddle in straw,
longing to poke through.

Three thoughts

Three thoughts close out the day --
Eighteen degrees and snow in April is not nice.
Slow running resists a world that turns too fast.
Freedom is all about giving up the will to exceed all expectation.

On a day like day three of April,
A Sunday,
it is all right
to sleep late,
do dishes and fold clothes, in place of grading papers,
to spend an afternoon immersed
in nylon brushes and acrylic color,
to throw paint on a canvas,
in the spirit of reclaiming time.

The year rushed through winter, toward an early spring,
causing those disinclined to like the snow to cheer.
But perhaps nature needed a few more days to prepare,
        And did so with a week of "sick days" --

Sudden snow, and a sharp dip in temperatures,
cold glittering rays of sun coupled with those Northwest gusts
all in the spirit of buying time.

Time, more scarce than water,
        yet squandered willfully --
        as we race ahead of ourselves,
and forget to check in on the present;
as we rush to exceed all expectations,
and displace our joy for journey,
until the destination comes,
with hollowness.

Like winter yowls in early April,
we can turn our clocks back,
and slow down
in an effort to reclaim the reasons why we live in the first place.

April 2

The date makes it clear that spring is well underway in the Northeast.
This year, the calendar and climate correlate.
Snow has melted, though there is some in the forecast;
The ground has thawed; green shoots of garlic are beginning to peek through their thick straw overcoats.
Daffodils dance in the breeze; crocuses and violets soon will blanket the earth in a deep purple haze.

In the farm fields, however, the past stands tall --
withered, browned but resolute, roots clinging deeply to earth,
holding hard-earned inches of topsoil carefully in place.
The stalks of last year's harvest evoke joy, sadness, twinges of guilt.
Moments of savoring sweetness,
moments of rancid rage,
moments of soured reconciliation, of bitter tumult.

The stalks of the past will soon be hand turned under;
in soil, they will decompose and in so doing nourish new growth.
What they represented will no longer be relevant,
unless we choose to remember.

Once more

I am back
for a month, more or less,
after a year of dreary institutional prose
in which I found a voice
and a calling
but perhaps not
the fun, frolicsome nature of free verse.

Work with no play
dulls the right brain;
we learned that fact
a long time ago.

But too much play seems to undermine
the value of hard work.
How do we reconcile?