April 15, 2012

I did not get started until late this morning, and so I am just now doing the poem and the note.  It's Sunday and the day for the blessing.  Last weekend was Fletcher's birthday and it got me thinking about when I had kids that were little, and their birthdays, and what it was to have them when they were little, how much I enjoyed them, and, yes, three birthdays in one month sometimes was a little much, it seemed that they all really enjoyed, not just the presents, but the cake, whatever shape they chose, and they chose some dillies, and it being their special day, with whatever they wanted for dinner, and friends, and fun.  I think we still do a pretty good job of birthdays! 

But the part I also remembered was all the little things that kids notice that grown ups don't, and their ways of exploring the world that often doesn't include any kind of inhibition on what they notice or on how loud that is, and the drive of their curiosity, they practically dance with it.  Fletcher can ask some of the same kind of questions my kids asked, and he wants answers the same way too, immediate and in great detail!  I found this poem this week and saved it for today, because having a little kid in your life is a blessing.  It can be exhausting, frustrating, maddening, all the permutations of those words, but . . . mostly it's a blessing of getting to see the world again in a new way.  Getting to be part of that discovery, that excitement.  If you have little ones, you see the world differently, it's a scarier place, but a brighter one too, so much joy packed into those little bones, that sketch of flesh over them, still becoming the person they will be and living the person they are.   This poem really reminded me of that as much as thinking about all the babies and little ones of the people I love, friends and family alike.  So this is the poem that reminded me of early days when everything was new, and old at the same time . . .

"Canyon de Chelly"

Lie on your back on stone,

the stone carved to fit

the shape of yourself.

Who made it like this,

knowing that I would be along

in a million years and look

at the sky being blue forever?

      My son is near me. He sits

and turns on his butt

and crawls over to stones,

picks one up and holds it,

and then puts it into his mouth.

The taste of stone.

What is it but stone,

the earth in your mouth.

You, son, are tasting forever.

      We walk to the edge of a cliff

and look down into the canyon.

On this side, we cannot see

the bottom cliffedge but looking

further out, we see fields,

sand furrows, cottonwoods.

In winter, they are softly gray,

The cliffs’ shadows are distant,

hundreds of feet below;

we cannot see our own shadows,

The wind moves softly into us.

My son laughs with the wind;

he gasps and laughs.

     We find gray root, old wood,

so old, with curious twists

in it, curving back into curves,

juniper, pinon, or something

with hard, red berries in spring.

You taste them, and they are sweet

and bitter, the berries a delicacy

for bluejays. The plant rooted

fragilely in a sandy place

by a canyon wall, the sun bathing

shiny, pointed leaves.

My son touches the root carefully,

aware of its ancient quality.

He lays his soft, small fingers on it

and looks at me for information.

I tell him: wood, an old root,

and around it, the earth, ourselves.

Simon Ortiz 

An unconventional blessing perhaps, but a true one nonetheless.  I like the father knew the son was not going to die of putting a rock in his mouth, that he was just doing one more kind of exploration.  Everything in this poem is bursting with flavor, and smells, and color. with distance and things right at hand, with growth and the old root.  I'm glad I got to stand on that cliff and look out, and down into the valley, and down into the earth where the root begins.  One of my greatest pleasures to this day is when one of my grown children comes in and says, "Mom, you've got to see this!"  and I go out and we look . . .