The light is lating. A slightness of time and breath. Two nights ago, 11,687,600 birds crossed over my head in migration (well, over Maine)—in the dark, between sunset and sunrise, most of them while I was sleeping.
In the cluster of days around the night migration, I took myself off to the Common Ground Fair to bring poetry into a small grove, edged on one side by a raucous play area with parades and children hammering nails (I can’t believe there are that many children who’ve never hammered nails!)…and on another by a train chugging and tooting, delivering and picking up.
Wistful and wild, an amazing union of time and space.
Friday’s reading at Russell’s Poetry Grove: in conversation with Jefferson Navicky, author of Head of Island Beautification for the Rural Outlands, an extraordinary and quirky book I adore. If standing on a street corner waving a flag would draw people to this book, I would. Alas, that’s not how it works. Alas, there’s less willingness in the big world to explore words in meaningful ways. With gratitude to Lelania Avila for making space, holding the grove, its energy (and of course to the fair for seeing her there).
Saturday: just me and Lovebird…Bird Love. Reading excerpts from two projects I’m working on in which pigeons hold sway in some way. Confession: the pigeon is my bird and shows up in remarkable ways in my life and my writing. I want to be the woman of flamingoes and ibises, but not so.
Sunday: Grandmothers in the Anthropocene with Kathleen Sullivan out there trying to tell a story that saves the world we’ve messed up (are continuing to mess up). Sometimes these events make me see things about my life I never would have seen—like that I have been aware of the fragility and beauty and living a life that values the real things for all my adult life (walking/not just talking)—not the fancy house or the super job, the things and stuff, the trips, elegant hotels, expensive cars. Honestly, it’s about recognizing the world, the wonder, the love and joy and contributing to the possibilities for everyone. You don’t have to believe me, but IT IS.
The poet Major Jackson has said, “Poetry could be the thing that brings the world together.”
On the off times, when not reading in the grove, what am I going to do? I know how to make jam and compost, bread. I know herbs. I can grow things. And can things. I can make things—enough things.
And so I celebrate the children for whom poetry is doing its good work, the thousands of children I watch passing by, running, riding in strollers, pulling little wagons, falling asleep on shoulders, singing and dancing and skipping, exclaiming, whining and crying. At times I sit on a granite slab, down at child height and catch them streaming by.
I go to the fair for the words, but If I’m honest, I’m pretty sure I go more for the children.
(all photos by Annaliese Jakimides)