ABOUT "LITTLE ESSAYS"

 

Fourteen years ago, I began writing blogs, or as two of my friends called this medium, "writing essays." When I think back to the inception of "A Word's Worth," I hear those two voices urging me to record short pieces about people and events, "exploring the fullness of life," as Rebecca Dale said of E. B. White's essays in The New Yorker. Some weeks I hear the "thud of ideas" White described as the action of his Muse. On other days, I hear the roll of thunder without the lightning of ideas.

Today is noisy enough with occasional thunder rolls, but the lightning flashes are confined to memories. And that's OK because most subject matter in my on-the-cusp-of 86 years old mind lies in the depository of memories. This rainy day I probe the memory of my decision to become a poet.

I was in the sixth grade and had returned to civilization after my father's great folly about the family becoming gypsies via tent camping, sleeping on roadside park tables, bathing in rivers en route to California in 1946. I was eleven years old and sighed in relief when we returned to the small southern town of Franklinton, Louisiana. There, I decided to become a poet in my sixth-grade classroom filled with what I called "country people" (offspring of farming parents). I'd been reading in a sixth-grade reader and delighted in a section on poetry. "I can do that," I thought, and promptly wrote a few lines about my new home: "away from the town's noisy din/from the roar of the cotton gin…" I wrote this following the example of my mother's hero, Robert Louis Stevenson. It's one of the very few rhyming verses I've left to posterity. Well, it does sound a bit better than "A birdie with a yellow bill/hopped upon my window sill…."

For approximately thirty years, I thought about becoming a poet, read a lot of poetry, and finally submitted a poem to The American Weave (now defunct) magazine, which published "My Father's Hands." The American Weave was a literary journal that paid me $18 from the Hart Crane Memorial Fund. Did I become a poet? No, this publishing event occurred in 1967, and I spent twenty more years reading and studying poetry and writing poems "underground." I did not return to thoughts about publishing poetry until 2008, when I moved to Sewanee, Tennessee. It is here that the biggest lightning strike in my life occurred, the flash in 2020 when I wrote Ridges, now on sale*. It's a book featuring my poems that accompany Don Thornton's wonderful paintings of Louisiana chenieres.

And so much for rain-inspired blogs and "come lately" poetry books. Tomorrow the weather may be sunny.

My latest book of poetry, Ridges, is available from me at P. O. Box 3124, Sewanee, Tennessee 37375 and from Pinyon Publishing, 23847 V66 Trail, Montrose, CO 81403. 

 

 

LYNCHBURG

 

The Caboose Restaurant

Saturday, I ate in a restaurant for the first time in a year. Barbecue seemed to be the ideal meal for a person who lives in Tennessee six months of each year and who has been isolated for a long spell (cautious about Covid). Although I had to hobble through a small town due to a torn meniscus in my right knee, I masked and found my place in a famous tourist haunt called “The Caboose Restaurant” in Lynchburg, Tennessee, home of Jack Daniels whiskey. 

I’d been through the Jack Daniels factory on a previous jaunt and again felt the irony of the famous whisky manufacturer being located in a dry county. Still, I’m not a whiskey sipper and haven’t investigated the reason for banning bourbon. I assume it’s a religious ban. I remembered that the distillery had been listed as the oldest registered distillery in the U.S. The tour guide at Jack Daniels also touted the bourbon as being made with iron-free cave water.

During the 19th century, 15 distilleries operated in Lynchburg, but Jack Daniels emerged as the second most productive manufacturer and eventually gained fame worldwide as a quality bourbon. Nowadays, tourists are offered samples, but when we toured the facility a few years ago, we weren’t offered a taste of this famous whiskey.

Lynchburg is one of those Tennessee “burgs,” and the winding scenic route from Sewanee to its city limits is worth a Saturday drive. I saw numerous farms with healthy-looking cattle grazing and homes in several prosperous-looking neighborhoods that I surmised had been built by livestock profits (horses and cattle).

I could hear an auctioneer bellowing as soon as we approached this small town of about 5700 residents and was shocked at the large crowd gathered in the square, many of whom were bikers showing off their body tattoos.

Lynchburg boasts of one traffic light, and amazingly, we found a parking space near the chosen restaurant. The Caboose’s hostess had once visited Mardi Gras in New Orleans, and when we paid for the hefty barbecue plate, she asked me to write out “let the good times roll” in my limited French. As we exited the restaurant, she continued to repeat the phrase to herself to impress the customers who followed us, many of whom were Texans.

The numerous shops surrounding the square reminded me of Bell Buckle, another historic Tennessee town that could be called a “burg.” That town, one in hilly horse country, was made famous by Webb School, a small institution my godfather attended as a boy and that produced numerous Rhodes Scholars. (Godfather became head of the English/Foreign Language Department at Virginia Polytechnic Institute.) 

I wondered about the derivation of the name “Lynchburg.” The town’s name seems to be related only to a Judge Lynch who headed up a vigilante committee that met after the War of 1812 (according to an article published in the spring 1972 article of the Tennessee Quarterly). 

Lynchburg may be a burg, but it’s listed on the National Register of Historic Places. I don’t know if the designation is attributable to the Jack Daniels factory, but many of the wood buildings on the town square appear to be several centuries old. And, of course, the town historians honor Little Richard, an American rock and roll musician who once resided in this “burg.”

Following a doctor’s counsel, I bought a cane to navigate the small town of Lynchburg. It now stands in the corner of my living room, but the next opportunity that arises, I’m back on the road again, even if the town turns out to be a Tennessee “burg.”

Photography by Victoria I. Sullivan

 

 

 

VISITING BIG SUR VICARIOUSLY

Coastal California Painting by Paul E. Marquart

Yesterday, we purchased several ice plants from Lapp’s Nursery near Winchester, Tennessee, and I’ve since been pondering my many side trips to Big Sur, California, where ice plants bloom freely during May.

This morning I leafed through photos of my brother Paul’s paintings of the California coast and found one that he had painted of the Big Sur area. Viewers of the photographs can even see two human figures climbing around in the rocky area. Still, none of his paintings show the wild ice plants that grow along Big Sur highways we traveled during California visits.

However, I happily remember those pink carpets covering the Big Sur area. The ice plant, a native of South Africa, was brought to the California coast during the 1970s to control erosion, but State Park officials no longer find the plants attractive or useful and encourage Big Sur residents to get rid of them. So much for aesthetics, they say, as the plant is very aggressive and can quickly cover large areas, crowding out attractive native flowers.

 

My Window Box Ice Plant

During May, if you drive along the Big Sur coast and look toward the surrounding mountainsides, you feel uplifted by seeing those pink carpets. I always liked vacation travels to the Pacific Coast, where the ice plant’s blooms engendered feelings of freedom and uplift in me.

The plants I bought yesterday are drought-resistant, which means I don’t have to worry about watering daily, so I find ice plants even more attractive. I look at the photo of brother Paul’s painting, imagining Big Sur, then back at my kitchen window box flanked by ice plants and feel my Tennessee imprisonment slowly lifting.

It’s peak ice plant season along the rocky coast of California and near my kitchen window box, so perhaps I’ll celebrate my birthday month by buying more mementos of past adventures along the California coast to satisfy my constant wanderlust. But I have serious doubts.

 

Photograph by Victoria Sullivan. Painting by Paul E. Marquart.

 

 

 

PINYON REVIEW 19, SPRING 2021, LIMITED EDITION

Chenier, a glass piece by Karen Bourque

This pocket-sized literary and art journal is another hand-sewn treasure produced by talented Susan Entsminger, editor/publisher of Pinyon Publishing in Montrose, Colorado. Susan, who began her artistic work alongside her husband, Gary Entsminger, (deceased) a decade or more ago, has continued designing and producing unique poetry and art books since Gary’s death. She has expanded this independent press's list to include international writers, photographers, and artists.

Susan has added poetry to her painting, drawing, and design repertoire in this issue of Pinyon Review 19 with an introductory poem entitled “Cured.” As I read the poem, I imagined the voice of my former editor (Gary) speaking to Susan: “She only heard/one message from the other side/he said, do not waste your joy/Sun on snow… Crows kept calling on the telephone wire/long after she had forgotten his number…” While reading author bios in this issue of Pinyon Review, I also discovered that Susan has been publishing poetry in Mudfish, Main Street Rag, and SAL. As I read, I envisioned Gary agreeing that she hasn’t “wasted her joy.”

In this hand-sewn edition, the poets Susan showcased  include renowned Luci Shaw, whose “Wishing Flower” is a poignant verse featuring a small child who observes “…dandelions proliferated enough/to cover the field with a tablecloth of gold/stars blowing in the wind…” Shaw, a long-time contributor to Pinyon, is Writer in Residence at Regent College, Vancouver, and received the 2013 Denise Levertov Award for Creative Writing.

I’ve had sporadic correspondence with the poet, Chuck Taylor, former Creative Writing Coordinator at Texas A&M who operates Free Slough Press. Chuck, also an accomplished photographer, contributed four lovely nature photographs, “Seeing More Than You See,” in this issue of Pinyon Review. He showcases his photographic work through shows in galleries, literary magazines, and on the web.

My dear friend, Karen Bourque, contributed a glass rendering of Ridges, my recent book of poetry and Don Thornton’s paintings published by Pinyon. The art piece features chenieres of Louisiana that publisher Susan describes as “vivid, visceral paintings.” Karen used stained glass, Apache tear, and kyanite to create her portrayal of the chenieres. It’s an arresting art piece that accompanies selected poems from Ridges, my book Susan will release in May.

Four haiku by Gary Hotham, a long-time contributor to Pinyon Publishing, will delight readers of “Dark Matters, ” a quartet about “early stars/fireflies changing/places.” Hotham is the Vice-President of the Haiku Society of America and has received several book awards for his haiku contributions.

As I said earlier, Pinyon #19 is a treasure created by Susan Entsminger, from the cover art and design of the High Country, Ouray Colorado to the last untitled poem by Simon Perchik “…in ashes, making room on the stove/in rest by a river/where there was none before.”

Limited Edition. Order through Pinyon Publishing, 23847 V66 Trail, Montrose, CO 81403

 

THE GREEN BIRD, ABSENTIA

 

I recorded a bit of bird watching in my last blog and have since seen even more birds of color: red, yellow, black, brown. Those sightings prompted memories of an elusive deep green bird I glimpsed after a few weeks of a two-year sojourn in Ahwaz, Iran. As a reminder of Iran, I substituted the drawing of a scene in Iran by New Iberia artist Georgia Dugan (now deceased) for the green bird.
 


I was still suffering from culture shock when I saw the beautiful green bird sitting in the desert near Marun, Iran, where I'd accompanied my husband when he worked on a water injection project in southern Iran. I hadn't photographed any Khuzestan scenes. However, I mentioned the green bird in a poem that the National Oil Company newspaper published. The poem attracted a visit from Hassan Hosseinipour, the company editor/poet who offered me a job writing for the Yaddasht Haftegy. I never saw the green bird again, and I'm sorry that I didn't photograph him. 
 


After seeing the bird, I asked my Dutch neighbor about him as she'd been an assistant veterinarian on the Isle of Cyprus. Maude Vroon had brought rice birds in her pocket via air when she moved to Iran and was an avid bird watcher. However, she just handed me a copy of Zien Is Kennen (Look to Know) to do my search for the green bird. The text and accompanying photo seemed to identify Groene Specht, a green woodpecker. This identification amazed me since trees were scant in Khuzestan, Iran.



The green woodpecker, a European species fond of ants, probably had been pecking in an old date orchard, the site of which had been decimated and became Melli Rah subdivision. In this company-owned residential area, we lived for two years. The bird uses the same nesting hole for ten years, and I reckon he hadn't changed residence in a decade. His main fare of ants may have eventually become termites, critters that caused us to move during the last few months of our two-year sojourn.
 


Later today, I plan to search for a children's animated series entitled Bagpuss, a woodpecker. A good friend often accuses me of romanticizing my sojourn in Iran. However, I do value the two-year experience I recorded in vignettes back in the '70s. In the introduction re-published in Iran: In A Persian Market, 2015, I often repeat the lament of Omar Khayyam, 11th-century Persian poet: "The glory is departed—Where? Where? Where?"
 


And the deep green bird remains vivid in my memories of Iran.

 

Drawing by Georgia Dugan (deceased).

A BIRD IN HAND

Bird Feeders at 65 Fairbanks Circle

 

When blogging becomes slogging because of a pain in the knee (that fragile connection between brain and leg!), daily activity slows down to bird watching from the sofa here in our Sewanee, TN retreat. It’s a meditative exercise, not unpleasant, but not very productive due to a strange malady known as a “torn meniscus” of the knee. This malady is usually caused by energetic, athletic activity, which is laughable in an on-the-brink of 86 year old, namely me. Only cortisone and the sight of birds calmed this blogger.

A full bird feeder is a yard attraction we acquired last year. So far, we’ve sighted cardinals, house finches, tufted titmice, flickers, chickadees, robins, nuthatches, goldfinches, towhees, and other feathered friends that have helped soothe an ailing knee with their acrobatic dives into the air beyond our big picture window in the living room. 

I am reminded of my essay in Their Adventurous Will about Caroline Dormon, a renowned Louisiana botanist whose love of birds inspired her lifelong bird watching near Briarwood, Louisiana. She often spoke of early bird watching in which she and her brother crawled out on limbs to peer in birds’ nests near her childhood home in Arcadia, Louisiana. After moving to Briarwood, she set up many feeding stations that she filled with chops for finches and cornbread for insect eaters! She also stuffed cornbread into flat rock crevices and made pencil snapshots of wrens, titmice, and nuthatches when they assumed different feeding attitudes. 

Miss Carrie’s chats in the Shreveport Times magazine led to her edition of Bird Talk, a favorite volume read by Louisiana naturalists during the 20th century. Many evenings at dusk for 50 years or more, Miss Carrie fed birds, hundreds of varieties that she said were as keen-minded as humans. She kept a display of birds’ nests on the back porch of her Briarwood cabin, and in tales of Apocrypha concerning her behavior, she recorded stories about birds plucking hair from her head to build birds’ nests. She also wore a large hat with nuts around the brim from which birds feasted.

“I wouldn’t think of living in a house so tightly closed that birds couldn’t fly in and out and squirrels frolic freely from outside to inside. That simply would not be living,” Miss Carrie related to her Louisiana author friend Lyle Saxon. 

I envision her sitting on my front porch (which faces the back yard) in the evenings, “keeping company with skunks and scorpions,” and “the kingdom come,” as a friend once said about this beloved botanist.

Photograph by Dr. Victoria I. Sullivan, a fellow Louisiana botanist

 

 

RIDGES

 

Cover of Ridges

On our arrival in Sewanee, TN, we found three boxes of Ridges, a volume of my poetry and Don Thornton’s paintings produced by Pinyon Publishing in Montrose, Colorado. Fortunately, Sister Madeleine Mary, CSM of the Sisters of St. Mary here in Sewanee, TN, had rescued and taken our books into our home on Fairbanks Circle during heavy rain, and all was saved. Since then, I’ve been sending out copies to a few regular readers that I hope will respond to my most-favored book. I sincerely appreciate Dr. Mary Ann Wilson’s salute to the “…blending of natural and human, art and place in a loving tribute to a fellow artist and friend, seeing in those ridges ‘the mudflats of old sufferings…”

The reference is to a volume of poetry and paintings designed by Susan Entsminger, publisher and editor of Pinyon Publishing, whose own artistic talent showcases the work of Don Thornton’s paintings and that which I consider my ultimate book of poetry. I had transported Don’s paintings from New Iberia, Louisiana to Sewanee a year ago where they sat in a box for months until I was able to overcome ennui caused by the threat of Covid disease hovering around everyone in the world. Perhaps the disease itself made me wonder if I’d ever feel like writing again. Only Don’s beautiful paintings could have challenged me to bring his art into book form. And after I sat with his work daily for several months, the Chenier Plain became my place of inspiration.

 

As botanist Dr. Victoria I. Sullivan explained in Ridges, the term chenier (or cheniere) derives from the Cajun word chene for oak. The Mississippi Chenier Plain is an ecological feature composed of coastal ridges 12-18 miles wide and 6-20 feet in elevation. The oak ridges stretch 124 miles from Sabine Pass, Texas, to Southwest Point, Louisiana. This plain is a rich mixture of wetlands, uplands, and open water that developed 7000 to 3000 years BP when water levels stood 16-20 feet lower than at present. Sea level rise between 3000 and 2500 BP submerged the cheniers to the extent we see them today.

The special foreword by Darrell Bourque, Louisiana Poet Laureate, 2007-2011, explains that in Ridges, “each poem takes an artist-poet-teacher to the crossroads of being, that sacred ridged place where Thornton lived most profoundly, most honestly, most deeply…” This morning I rejoice as I re-read Bourque’s foreword and take another long look at the “blue, blue skies, the rosy sand in the mud flats, the yellow he assigned to love, the brooding skies too, the impending storms, the golden, fuchsia, lavender and purple sunsets, each detail springboard for Moore to attach to a life, a marriage, a vocation, the sacred, the obstinate, the tortured, the mendicant, the explorer…”

I am proud of this book, of Don, of Suzi, his wife; of Vickie, who photographed the paintings, of Darrell and his grace-filled poetic introduction to the book; and of Susan, who realized the importance of making Ridges available to poets, biographers, and nature lovers. I hope that Ridges finds a prominent place in Louisiana history and culture as it found its precious place in my love of the Louisiana landscape through the eyes of master artist Don Thornton.

Here is “Blue Skies,” a poem and accompanying painting from Ridges:

 

 Blue Skies

That blue sky so close to the water,

a mirage of ridges behind,

was clear enough to banish bad spirits;

he could hear Ella Fitzgerald …

no, it was Willie Nelson …

singing “Blue Skies” that day.


The scattered frequency

moved his eyes into calmer light,

thoughts cleared of apparitions,

the mud flats of old sufferings,

and the wind, a mouth for Spirit,

created verse void of form within.

 

Oaks on the ridge swayed

while he drifted in the boat,

soon fell asleep

in the color of blue,

awakened to music dissolving,

      his soul spinning on a tuning fork.

Order books by emailing me at deaconwriter@gmail.com or snail mailing at PO Box 3124, Sewanee, TN 37375. 

IN THE CLOVER

 

 

Everything is coming up clover. And I don't need to return to Iran, where I once viewed super-abundant fields of clover to see this spring flower blooming. My front yard is a field of white blossoms buzzing with fat bumblebees. Many of my neighbors have mowed their clover crops, but I'm loathe to see my front yard lose its snowy blossoms. I'm currently reading Basho, the haiku master, who glimpsed clover in bloom and was inspired to write: "Bush clover in blossom waves/without spilling a drop of dew."

Yesterday afternoon when I went outdoors to get the mail, I lingered in the front yard clover field longer than I wanted when the neighbor's hunting hound got loose and ran over for his perceived playtime. He jumped on me, pushed me into the clover field thrice before I was rescued by my friend Vickie who held back the dog until I could regain use of my 85-year old legs. The clover cushioned me nicely, but the playful dog that has had no canine training must have thought I wanted to look for lucky four leaves amid the field of white blossoms. I have several deep claw marks on my arm and hand as evidence of what he felt was a playful encounter.

As for the clover, I've given up looking for four-leaf specimens as I've heard that there are 5,000 three-leaf clovers for one four-leaf sample. Three-leaf clover symbolizes some notable theological virtues to which I aspire: faith, love, and hope.

 

As an administrator in Girl Scouting, I wore the traditional badge of this organization: a trefoil badge fashioned after a three-leafed clover plant for which Juliette Low gained the patent in 1914. When she stepped down from being the head of Girl Scout operations, GSUSA asked for this trefoil's patent. Clever Juliette Low agreed to do so only if the organization would keep her name on the Girl Scout constitution, stationery, and membership card. I have that evidence on a Certificate of Lifetime Membership card awarded me when I retired from the Bayou Girl Scout Council's administrative staff in Lafayette, Louisiana. I keep it in my wallet next to my driver's license.

I know that old maxims refer to wealth as being "in the clover," a saying that doesn't always mean a field of this plant in your yard symbolizes financial prosperity. However, I remain resistant to the idea of mowing my front yard patch and would search for a four-leaf specimen if I were assured that the hound next door wouldn't escape and throw me into the clover patch.

Photographs by Victoria Sullivan

 

 

A SOAP OPERA

There it was, an image too long in my memory: a tall Mason jar filled with narrow slivers of once-white soap, an unattractive display of objects exposing my father’s parsimonious nature. I got rid of this family heirloom after my father died, but the jar remained in its place on the bathroom sill much longer than I wanted to see it, a vessel holding dried-out, cracked pieces of a soap that supposedly floated in bath water.

The sight of those slivers of soap reminded me of the soaping up my birth family and I did when we bathed in the Colorado River under a bridge in Austin, Texas. That soaping up was one of the few baths our family took during a three-month camp-out en route to California during the 1940s. The soap was a large bar of Ivory, and it remained the soap of the day for the Marquart family as long as I lived under my father’s roof and rule.

Postcard of Bridge over Colorado River at Austin

However, my Grandmother Nell preferred orange-colored Lifebuoy soap and forced Grandfather Paul into a claw-footed tub once a week where she scrubbed him briskly, fussing all the while about having to kill germs that lurked on my ailing grandfather’s skin. During summer visits, she’d also use that same orange bar on me every afternoon following my nap. The scrubbing occurred so that I’d smell clean enough to visit the “garage,” or Motor Sales and Service where my grandfather sold Ford automobiles and black grease abounded. So much for one of Grandmother Nell’s contradictions!

I admit to succumbing to soap scents dating from childhood and have collected special bars such as those smelling of fresh citrus, candy, and cinnamon that have been wrapped in crinkly cellophane or placed in decorative boxes. I’ve put those bars in bureau drawers, on closet shelves, and sometimes under pillows. The soaps are acknowledgments to ancient Babylonians who in 3900 B.C. created special soaps they used for cleanliness and health. It seems that soap has been a bath essential a lot longer than my father’s old collection of Ivory slivers.

I’ve often considered making soap, but the idea of using lye in processing prevents me from doing anything other than buying new scented bars in special boxes and wrappings that others have made.

Perhaps these special bars of soap would have been an affront to my father, who preferred the pure white bars of Ivory, but when an image of those dried-up slivers in a jar enters my mind, I mentally dispose of it again...and hastily open a new box of cucumber soap.

 

 

 

 

SPRING BRINGS MESSAGES OF AZALEAS

When Basho, the celebrated Haiku poet, was eating lunch at an inn at Lake Biwa, Japan, he saw our favorite spring flower blooming and wrote: “Azaleas arranged in a pot/Chopping cod in the shade/A woman.”

In New Iberia, Louisiana, and most southern states—Georgia, South Carolina, Alabama—azaleas are blooming apace, not in pots but in yards where these lovely plants have been growing for years. And, alas, their delicate petals will last only a few weeks during warm southern springs. But while those red, white, and pink shades bloom, we celebrate their proliferation. 

Azaleas probably carry more meaning than Basho’s reference to a woman chopping cod in the shade while azaleas bloom nearby in a pot. According to Apocrypha, the meaning associated with this beautiful flower is femininity and mother’s love. But if you have one blooming in your yard now, you’re probably anticipating good luck and sudden happiness. Red azaleas symbolize the magic of life, but woe be to those who receive gifts of yellow azaleas as these symbolize hypocrisy and are sent to people who have insulted you. Also, don’t taste this beautiful flower because it’s poisonous. However, for those who like an evening glass of wine, Koreans tout a non-poisonous wine made from azaleas called dugyeonju.

Azalea bushes are seldom bothered by insects. (If they’d only bloom all year and repel mosquitoes here in Louisiana). They seem to get enough water while blooming in swamp country, and although their reign is short, they’ll always bear the name of “Royalty of the Garden.” 

Then there are the “Late Bloomers,” an orange ground cover azalea, and the yellow flowering azalea called “Weston’s Lemon Drop,” both of which bloom in late summer. Later, in the early fall, look for a variety called “Sweet September,” which bears a pink blossom. 

While Coronavirus rages, we continue to trust the predictions of good luck and happiness associated with the flowering of this beautiful plant. And we continue to search for more haiku some ancient Japanese poet may have written about this sweetly scented shrub we southerners enjoy with the advent of a Louisiana spring.

 

Photograph by Victoria Sullivan

 

 

 

 

WHAT’S IN THREE LINES

Painting by Paul E. Marquart

Spring inspires most of us in various ways—perhaps the mild weather causes us to write poetry, paint, or plant flowers. The advent of spring inspires me to search my shelves for books about haiku, those three elegant lines of aesthetic verse written by the great Japanese poets. The major ones include Basho, Buson, and Issa, for whom haiku was a way of life, sometimes, as in Basho’s case, a wandering way of life that required focused attention to details of nature, primarily flowers, trees, mountains, lakes…

When I looked for books about this art form, I discovered Natalie Goldberg’s observations about three-line verses and her visits to Japan to study haiku further in a book entitled Three Simple Lines. However, Sam Hamill’s Pocket Haiku, published by Shambala Press in 1995, actually ended up in a pocket of my Covid-wear (slouch pants). The book satisfied my envee for haiku and sent me outdoors several times yesterday.

Those three lines of an art form in poems by the aforementioned Japanese poets—Basho, Buson, and Issa—peaked in the 1700s and spanned only 100 years of Japanese literature. This brief period brought listeners and readers poignant and lasting metaphors in three short lines of 200 poems in Hamill’s translation. The book is small enough to fit into a pocket of slouch pants, robes, or blue jeans, any casual wear that allows haiku readers to relax and think about images of beauty.

Most contemporary poets fail to compose poignant insights in three lines of verse, and Hamill cites Gary Snyder, Richard Wright, and Richard Wilbur as leading the enlightened few to produce memorable haiku.

 

Many wannabe poets attempt to write in this form but fail to explode the top of my head, metaphorically, as Emily Dickinson describes her feeling from reading good poetry. The work of a master does not reflect brief surface thoughts but records a single moment of deep spiritual contemplation.

When I look at my brother Paul’s painting above, I think of haiku and wish that I could write a “three-liner” that captures a single moment of appreciation for this lovely piece of art. I dare not! However, I allow Basho to say what I feel:

Come out to view

the truth of flowers blooming

in poverty.

Painting by Paul Emerson Marquart, photo by Lori Marquart

A PRIMITIVE FLOWER?

Five million years ago, the beautiful Japanese Magnolia took its place among the ancient tree species of southwest China; however, the first trees sent to America were from Japan. Our resident botanist, Dr. Victoria Sullivan, says Japanese Magnolia are "primitive flowers." According to Apocrypha, if the tree blooms out of season, you might be harboring anxiety in your home. Perhaps, but I think these trees are just signaling an early seasonal shift—it's called "spring."

The lovely purple blossoms that appear on the trees around New Iberia, Louisiana, could be a variety known as Jane Japanese Magnolia. Still, I'm not a horticulturist or botanist, and to me, they're just blooms that not only enhance the Cajun landscape, they also carry a delicious fragrance I enjoy while sweeping the backyard patio. Some of these Japanese Magnolia blooms can grow up to 12 inches across, and the petals form a shape like a goblet or Communion cup, so I own a tree of sacred vessels.

Fortunately, my Japanese Magnolia was planted behind my home because this location symbolizes that it's in the right place to bring financial security. But I'm warned not to sleep under a blooming Japanese Magnolia tree, or the fragrance would kill me. And what a way to go!

I'm supposed to be on the lookout for Japanese beetles, slugs, and leaf miners, but the weather has been too cold for me to do daily inspections, and I'm assuming that the cool temps have deterred their proliferation. Some garden enthusiasts prune their Japanese Magnolia trees after they flower, but renegade gardener that I am, I allow it to have its way in the backyard. So far, it has been a "long laster," blooming during its appointed season since the late 1970s.

I don't know if the new fence we built (to ward off the hounds that were slipping through a wire fence into our backyard) has bothered our long-growing magnolia beauty. Still, so far, nothing has deterred the blooming of this spectacular flower. It's taller than the fence and thumbs its nose at the barking dogs beneath.

P.S. In a few weeks, I'll get to see another spectacular spring display in my backyard at Sewanee, Tennessee—yellow and white daffodils. As Basho writes: "How I long to see/among the morning flowers/the face of God."

 

Photograph by Victoria Sullivan

 

 

RETURN TO DIDDY WAH DIDDY

I suppose that not many people will view Nomadland and get an envee to buy an old van and take to the road, but I felt vagabond stirrings within me after I saw this award-winning movie.

In 1946, just after WWII, my father decided to quit his job as a civil engineer in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and travel to "nomadland" to become a gypsy, as he called it. And when he presented this idea to my mother, she, who had been a Golden Eaglet Girl Scout and primitive camped in Alabama as a young girl, agreed that gypsying would be the life to lead. My father sold all our furniture, bought a utility trailer, filled it with camping equipment, and didn't bother to ask if any of his four children liked the idea. We were expected to wander in the western United States indefinitely. I once described my father's decision as a time when I heard all the doors of schools and libraries clanging shut against me.

My father took us to see Marlene Dietrich and Ray Milland star as gypsies in "Golden Earrings," and romantic that he was, he decided that gypsying was the way for all of us to live. My mother became excited about this proposed adventure. So, one warm day in May, after school had let out, we packed a utility trailer with camping equipment and an old trunk from my mother's college days crammed with all the clothes we were allowed to take. We filled a giant jug with water and placed it at my one-year-old brother Harold's feet in the front seat of a '41 Ford coupe, and off we went.

We survived three months on the road and 'though the open road looks appealing to me today, I remember uncomfortable days traveling ever westward, sleeping on stone tables in state parks, bathing in the Brazos River, and eating a barbecued jackrabbit my father had shot one night (illegally). Because I complained that I might never see a school again, he named me "a luxury-loving gal" and continued the odyssey. It ended in busy Los Angeles where he decided to turn around in traffic whizzing by and declared, "We're going home."

The Diddy Wah Diddy experience reminded me that I'm not an intrepid camper, but I like to think I could be. You can Google small trailers on the net and turn up photos of tiny campers for sale that feature everything except bathrooms and visualize crossing the Mohave Desert on a warm day in June. You might quickly return to earth. However, I admit that during these enforced times of isolation due to the Covid virus, travel trailers look enticing.

But… would you go out there in the vast expanse of desert or pass through it to avoid Covid, or seek company and amenities in nomad land at nightfall? Or would you fly on through it like the Flying Dutchman? I reckon you'd have to "keep a 'going," as my Grandfather Paul used to say. (He was one to talk since when he finally located my mother on the Diddy Wah Diddy trip, he encouraged her to come home rather than continue with the odyssey).

 

And so I sit at my desk watching fat robins fly in and quickly fly back out, and return to looking at small travel trailers, then add a second Diddy Wah Diddy trip to my bucket list. Maybe when I'm 90??!!