Look Up

the sky’s the thing in morning, not 
brown and winter-killed grass 
crisply crunching underfoot 
nor other walkers, their frisking dogs, 
that orange school bus idling at the curb. 

let go the world weight of war and loss, 
news of death descending in predawn darkness 
through emailed newsletters 
and iPhoned alerts. 

the sky’s the thing: look up! 
after days of fog and gray, 
here comes the sun again 
silhouetting trees 
against this day’s whitening, lightening 
brightening blueing dawn. 

Seven Years of Memoir Writing

Seven years ago, I started work on something like a memoir. I wasn’t sure quite what I wanted to write, or for what eventual audience, so I followed some advice from William Zinsser that I found online: 

“Go to your desk on Monday morning and write about some event that’s still vivid in your memory. What you write doesn’t have to be long—three pages, five pages—but it should have a beginning and an end. Put that episode in a folder and get on with your life. On Tuesday morning, do the same thing. Tuesday’s episode doesn’t have to be related to Monday’s episode. Take whatever memory comes calling; your subconscious mind, having been put to work, will start delivering your past.” 

As I followed this advice, I thought about the distinction between autobiography and memoir and the importance of that distinction. Autobiographies tend to be chronological and heavy on facts, more like history than story. Memoirs, on the other hand, seem to be more thematic, and focus more on ideas, stories, and feelings. While autobiographies tell a whole life story, memoirs focus on specific times or experiences or ideas. 

Then there’s the question of audience: my daughters? my extended family? the world at large? or maybe just me? 

I’ve wrestled with issues of privacy and telling my own stories without hurting other people who were/are part of those stories. I’ve spent dozens of hours rereading fat files of old letters typed on onionskin paper and dozens of journals that alternate between fascinating and cringe-worthy. 

Now I have hundreds of stories and well over 100,000 words of memoir-in-progress. I began to organize some of it as “Letters to My Daughters.”  I proposed to myself a less-personal theme of “Rural Route 3.” I arranged smaller pieces in more-or-less chronological, sort-of-autobiographical sections. “The clouds are blue” is one of my earliest memories, along with “Learning to read upside down.” Life on the farm includes “Boxelder tree,” “Silage,” and “The day Dad had his heart attack.” Those, and many more, are filed in the “Growing Up” section,. Later sections include “Leaving home,” “The Law Years,” “Getting to Children” and “Winding Down.” I have worked, reworked, and rewritten some material into several 4-7,000 word essays: “Ask Not,” “One in Three,” “Rural Route 3,” “Faith Journey,” “Aunties and Archetypes,” and “Ninety in the Shade.” 

Seven years into the project, I still do not know whether anyone (other than myself) will find value in all of this or want to read it. That matters less to me now than it did in the beginning. If I have written all of this for myself alone, that is a project well worth my time and energy. 

Hungry

The children are hungry
all of the children, all of the time,
and the world turns eyes away. 

“Highly food insecure,” the UN says,
“and at risk of famine.”
The children are hungry. 

In Gaza, bombs keep falling;
In Gaza, people keep dying, 
among them children, all of the time. 

Food is a weapon, 
starvation a tactic of war. 
The children are hungry. 

The world watches in horror, the UN reports:
“Every single person in Gaza is hungry.”
The children are hungry,
all of the children, all of the time. 



Jonathan Guyer. “US insists it’s trying to get aid into Gaza as UN warns millions ‘at risk of famine.’” (The Guardian, 1/19/24)

By Order of Governor Greg Abbott

A mother and her two children, 
fleeing no one knows what,
coming from no one knows where, 
stepped into the Rio Bravo,
walked into the Rio Grande
last Friday night 
in the dark and in the cold.

Across the river: safety. 
Or so they thought.
On the other side: help.
Or so they thought. 

Mexican police called the Border Patrol:
migrants in distress,
in the river, in distress,
in the night, in distress,
in the cold, in distress. 

In Eagle Pass, Texas National Guards 
stood with their guns
barring Border Patrol from the border. 
Governor’s orders:
no more Border Patrol at our border. 
Go away. Nothing to see here. 

A mother and her two children, 
fleeing no one knows what,
coming from no one knows where, 
floated downstream until
Mexican officials pulled lifeless bodies 
from the Rio Bravo / Rio Grande. 

“The only thing that we’re not doing is 
we’re not shooting people who come across the border,”
said Texas Governor Greg Abbott 
one week before his National Guard
let a mother and her children drown.


NOTE: if you prefer news reports to poetry, here are the sources:
• Texas Tribune
• CBS
• Heather Cox Richardson
• The Guardian

December Dawn

Shadows blur trees as I walk before dawn, 
dark skies and dull clouds mirror my mood. 
Brown Christmas holds no magic memories, 
no glistening frost, no shining promise.  
As the sun rises behind slate gray clouds,
no snow softens the daily disasters 
carried on each evening’s news: daylight brings
only stark reality, war and death. 
I search for hints of color in the sky, 
but find black trees and unremitting gray.
I aim my camera at their silhouettes
and it gives back a sky of blue and white, 
breaks open hope, a silent gift for me,
revealing a dawn brighter than I see. 

Note: The photo, taken this Christmas Eve morning, shows a blue sky but–as the poem says–the sky was actually gray, and stayed so the entire day.

Fourth Sunday 2023: Prophets and Promises

Prophets promise peace and prosperity, 
kingdom secure for all generations:
they lie, of course, or are deceived by God—
no peace then, nor now, nor ever, amen.  
Today’s wars kill our children, bloody earth
and still we stumble on, seeking prophets
or angels or God, someone to believe,
some balm for our wounds, some peace in our time. 
Stubborn hope perseveres, beyond reason, 
beyond logic, kept alive by heroes,
dreamers, poets, loving in the darkness. 
We hold hope and a memory of love 
enduring past all reason and through time.
In darkest winter, we must be the light. 

Reflections on:
2 Samuel 7:1-11, 16
Psalm 89:1-4, 19-26 
Luke 1:26-38
John 1:5

Third Sunday 2023: A Voice Crying in the Desert

Now bring glad tidings to the poor,
feed and shelter the homeless
among you, those who are hungry. 
Heal those who are brokenhearted,
holding no hope in the face of
loss and hate and unholy wars. 
God sends the rich away empty,
but not today, not here and now.  
Though darkness and war surround you
Testify to the light always,
Test everything; retain the good.
Refrain from all kind of evil.
God’s hands are your hands and my hands.
Testify to the light always.

– – – – – –

Sonnet on the scripture readings for the Third Sunday of Advent:

Isaiah 61:1-2A, 10-11

1 Thessalonians 5:16-24

John 1:6-8, 19-28

Second Sunday of Advent, 2023: Comfort My People

Comfort, O comfort my people, says God.
A bishop stands praying in Texas where 
a young man lies in a hospital bed. 
Comfort, O comfort the migrants who come 
flesh torn by cruel concertina coils
sun-burned, dehydrated, scorched by the heat 
bodies crushed, bones broken, life leaking out
someone’s father brother sister mother.
Comfort, O comfort my people, says God.
You are my people, they are my people, 
seeking safety, dying in a strange land,
and God will feed the flock like a shepherd,
gently gather the lambs, carry them home.
In Texas, a bishop stands by the bed. 


[References: 
First reading for the Second Sunday of Advent, Isaiah 40:1-11 and “Praying with dying migrants a key duty for El Paso’s Bishop Seitz” in National Catholic Reporter, December 4, 2023.]

Remembering Letter Writing

Long years ago, I wrote to distant friends
I’d never met. Letters connected us—
me a Catholic schoolgirl on a farm, 
him a Jewish atheist, sixty-ish;
me a left-ish political misfit,
him a Peace Corps type, teaching far away; 
me a pen pal reaching for connection,
her a Danish teen, practicing English.
Down a gravel road, the raised mailbox flag
signaled shared stories, caring, connection,
questions asked, beliefs challenged, thoughts provoked. 
For me, a thousand miles from anywhere,
these envelopes with their strange stamps shifted
paradigms and opened new horizons.

First Sunday of Advent, 2023: Stay Woke

Free public domain CC0 photo.

Keep awake, stay woke, Matthew writes to us
across centuries, through millennia. 
You do not know the day of the end times;
you do not know the time of your testing.
This generation will not pass away,
he wrote, two thousand and more years ago.
Beware, keep alert; for you do not know,
about that day or hour, no one knows. 
Stay woke, awake, aware, ready to act.
When today you see injustice, be woke:
God’s work on earth still our work, your work, mine.
Defend the poor, and strangers in our land;
speak truth to power; demand peace, not war.
God will also strengthen you to the end.