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. 

 

 

KATE AND LILLIAN

“This month (March) shall be the beginning of months for you; it is to be the first month of the year to you.” Exodus 12:2

I’ve always maintained that if everyone had the opportunity to hold a baby for about a half hour each morning, the world would become a better place to inhabit – and I’m able to add to this sage counsel that if everyone had the opportunity to hold twins each morning, they’d take a twofold mellow attitude into the world that day. I know because I had one newborn squeakbox under each arm yesterday morning — my great-granddaughters Kathryn Ann and Lillian Celeste Romero, and after holding them, I felt like I had just drunk a big cup of “Mello Joy”.

I had read all of this stuff about equations, models, and designs for showing differences and similarities in twins and looked at complicated scientific drawings that predicted behavioral differences, but when I saw those innocent faces framed by silky black hair, I decided to love both of them the same… despite any variations in personalities. Kate weighed in at 6 lbs. 3 oz., one minute before Lillian, who was slightly smaller at 5 lbs. 11 oz. Kate may be the most dominant of the pair because in ultra-sound pix taken before birth, she seemed to be sitting on Lillian during Kristin’s (their mother) entire pregnancy. However, I feel certain they’ll be “same-same” about loving each other.

On March 1, “the beginning of months” for them, the skies were overcast when the day began, but by 9 a.m. a brilliant sun had appeared. I looked out of my window and saw oak leaves fluttering in a south wind and intuited that the twins had blown in. All would be well. A few moments later, their grandmother Stephanie called to announce their arrival. I went into the living room and picked up Robert Louis Stevenson's A Child’s Garden of Verses that I had bought for myself years ago and opened to my favorite poem entitled “Happy Thought:” “The world is so full of a number of things,/I’m sure we should all be as happy as kings.” I spent a few hours thinking about all the children’s books I wanted to share with them, “sitting safe in nursery nooks,/Reading picture storybooks.”

When I visited Kate and Lillian yesterday, they were swaddled in blankets and lying on their backs. They seemed to be totally relaxed about their entry into the world, living up to their names, both of which mean “pure” — free from discordant qualities (which means no all-night crying sessions, right?) and free from contamination (so I hope no one in their room turns on the news containing political posturing this week!).

Here they are, waiting for all those arms to hold them… and one snapshot of big brother Alexander Charles enfolding one of them in his arms, excited about the miracle of two girls appearing in his life. He’s unmindful that he’ll soon have to share his toys and endure two girls following him to soccer games and places that he doesn’t want them to be. There’s even a snap of me in a happy moment bent over an infant that some people deem as “the first object of our compassion.”

A picture is worth a thousand of my words this morning, so I hope you’ll enjoy looking at the miracle of Kate and Lillian and will help me welcome them into a warm and cheerful world.

Photographs by Dad Martin and Victoria I. Sullivan