Today is my son’s fortieth birthday. Yes, 4O. Every year at the moment of his entrance into the world, I call or text him. I may sing a silly “Happy Birthday” song to him, or I may just wish him happiness on his special day. Or, as today, I might sing few bars of “Bye Bye, Blackbird” to him.

When he was still a baby, I would sing to him often when rocking with him on my lap. “A Froggy Went A-Courting” was one we enjoyed, but “Blackbird” was our favorite. My baby would gurgle and laugh as I bounced him to the rhythm.

Pack up all my care and woe
Here I go singing low
Bye, bye blackbird

Where somebody waits for me
Sugar’s sweet, so is she
Bye, bye blackbird

No one here can love or understand me
Oh what hard luck stories they all hand me

Now make my bed and light the light
I’ll arrive late tonight
Blackbird, bye, bye.

Regardless of the meaning behind the lyrics, my baby and I always shared it as a happy song, one in which the protagonist, a “black bird” was going toward better, happier times.

Each year as I celebrate my son’s birth, I return to these sweet moments in the early years when the two of us seemed, in Helen Reddy’s words, united “against the world.” Today, this celebration of his forty years is also a call out for hope, for strength to get past the many ills that plague us–terrible virus, the chaos in our government, the rise of militant groups who plot violent acts against others. So much to despair about.

But today, I choose hope that all of us may “pack up our cares and woes” and arrive in a safe place as soon as possible. It’s been a hard ride.

Fertility *

Burr Oak Street in rural Michigan
glows with brown, gold,
yellow, orange leaves.

October 9. Pains begin at 12:05 a. m.
A cool night, bracing itself
for colder nights to come.

I know the signs, count the seconds
between each throb, electric
belly currents.

I climb steps to the first floor slowly,
one at a time, brace myself,
grip iron railings,
for each wave is

like a heartbeat
like a tribal drum
like an urgent call.

Outside, wet wind blows leaves
against the house. It’s
almost Halloween.

 ***
At three years old I am a ghost
in white sheet, eyes peering
through ragged slits.

I moan, and my girl voice rises
through an Indiana fall night,
joins wet winds

bearing down on leaves, mostly yellow,
some orange, a damp carpet
on lawns, sidewalks.

This will be a long night of monitors
ice chips, moans, counted breaths,
dampened forehead patted dry.

At 8:11 a. m. he will emerge,
his cries like a chicken clucking.

I will take him home. By then,
trees will stand barren of leaves.

*From Portals: A Memoir in Verse, Kelsay Books 2019

It’s hard to believe that Summer officially began last Saturday, June 20, also known as “Summer Solstice.” Maybe it’s because of our current state of lock down, the sense of timelessness since mid-March, when we began to really understand the ravaging impact of COVID-19 not just on us, but on all of humanity. During this time, I’ve found it important to tap into nature, whether it be a walk in the neighborhood, a visit to the backyard to read, sip tea, and watch the birds and squirrels or the occasional rabbit that hops about in our backyard.

In such isolation, it’s easy to forget how really connected we are to other people and to nature. Last Sunday, I was grateful to be reminded of  UU’s Sixth Source: “Spiritual teachings of Earth-centered traditions which celebrate the sacred circle of life and instruct us to live in harmony with the rhythms of Nature.” Selena Fox, Wiccan priestess, interfaith minister, environmentalist, pagan elder, author, and lecturer in the fields of pagan studies, ecopsychology, and comparative religion, spoke during our online church service.

You may want to listen to Serena’s sermon. It could answer any questions you might have as to her spiritual journey and how it can be viewed alongside other religious traditions.

In recent years, because of my various ventures into ancestral traditions, I’ve come to deeply appreciate our seasonal connections with nature to remind us in the very deepest sense, that we are not alone. I was particularly drawn to”Ygdrassil,” by photographic artist, Danny Rebb. Finding out about the rituals associated with this sacred tree reminded me again of the interconnection of everything to nature.

• 

My poem by the same name ends Portals: a Memoir in Verse. (the cover photo is also by Danny Rebb).

Yggdrasil

after Danny Rebb’s photo, “Yggdrasil”

At first, snow-covered tree, stark against sepia sky,
barn-rust-colored building, Private Property on
its side. A second glance of what winter
approximately spreads onto lilies-of-the-valley  
scattered below as if falling from the sacred tree,
as if spreading seeds, as if Yggdrasil expands
with noisy, clanging voices, shouts rising
above raucous shouts to be heard.

1.

Sacred arbor, cousin to oak, Druid for door, lore
of ethereal, higher ground. I want to mount the silver
tree, climb up, up through branches until I reach what?
Perhaps those Viking blood origins of ancestor,
Rollo,protector of Normandy and my last name.

2.

I am swallowed up into this tree, in its white erasure.
I hear rude blood voices, silent for all these centuries.
I want to touch my oak, my sign, sister of the ash,
I want to hear, to be my wren, bird of singing, bird of soul.
I want to fly to the blue stones of Wales,
sarsen stones pulled, dragged hundreds of miles
to this place of worship.

3.

In deep winter,
I see people in red, green, ram’s horns, arms lifted
to greet the dawn of shortest day. I want to tell them
that a stream of light will mark the day after
the day of ending darkness, that all will turn
warm with yule log burning and holly branches
to grace the halls and walls of human spirit.

4.

In Midsummer,
the festival of LithaI,
the scent of bale fires drives out evil spirits.
I see Druids in white gowns, men, women,
children with wagons, horses.
With them all, I welcome the flourishing
crops. With them all, I wait for sun as it rises
between ancient stones,
as it brings the longest day.

As I look forward later this year to the publication of my memoir, Divine Aphasia: A Woman’s Search for the Father, I realize that so much of what we suffer in mind and body is connected to loss and past trauma. An MD/Naturopath recently recommended the film, Heal, as a way of understanding how we are impacted by our thoughts and inherited pain. I’ve also found the work of Brene Brown, who invites us to embrace our imperfections and live wholeheartedly. For me, this path involves writing one’s story, be it in memoir or poetry, as a way to confront and embrace what we’ve experienced in our past.

My “trauma” was nothing compared to those with PTSD due to war, sexual or domestic abuse, or issues related to loss such as essential workers during the COVID crisis or survivors of the Holocaust. I did not have a terrible childhood. My sisters, who were older, loved me in their own ways. And, as my recently deceased sister Betty said to me a couple of years ago, “We were lucky. Our parents loved us.”

So in this memoir, a reader will not encounter deep, dark family secrets. Rather, you will see the impacts of a life dotted with constant change and movement. You will watch the narrator grow up with a father, a decent man, who dealt with his depression about the state of the world with self-medication, a man who, defeated, died at age 62, leaving behind his wife of forty years. You will see his youngest daughter, the narrator, move through her life, trying to find her father, one marriage after another marriage, until, living with the one who seemed closest to Dad, she realizes that she cannot save him. She can only save herself.

One more thought. This book will come out in the midst of one of the worst crises of my lifetime: the Coronavirus Pandemic. I find great comfort in the words of Jennifer Horne, Poet Laureate of Alabama, in her poem, “guest house.”

Knowing the day will come
of leaving and goodbyes,

make your art now.


There Was the Book

my lover brought to me, in a women’s ward
of St. Vincent’s Hospital. The book he gave me
before he walked away into the shadowed hallway.

Nuns tended me, looked kindly into my tired face.
Perhaps they knew nothing about the baby.
Perhaps they knew nothing about the father.

There were moments of stolen delight.
There was the church, Anglican, as
Catholic as you can get without being Roman.
There was the defrocked priest who put his hand
down my dress, squeezed my breast
as he tried to persuade me not to leave my husband
for the lover, and there was the other priest
who told us we had to decide.

There was the wife.
She and he sat next to me in the church choir.
After I lost the baby, she told me not to kneel,
to take care of myself.

She knew it was his.

And there was the book of Saint John of the Cross.
I’m told he suffered dark nights without God.
It was a small, gilt-bound volume,
holy, full of anguish.

From Portals: a Memoir in Verse. Kelsay Press, 2019

Since the onslaught of COVID-19, I’ve asked friends , “What movie or novel are you in during this pandemic?” Responses include La Peste (The Plague) by Albert Camus, Blindness, by Jose Saramago, On the Beach by Nevil Shute, and the film Soylent Green. I’m sure those reading this will have your own responses. I’d love to hear from you in the Comments section!

For me, Beckett’s Waiting For Godot comes to mind. My close friends will not be surprised. I often bring up the plight of Vladimir and Estragon (ad nauseum to some, I’m sure), whenever I encounter an absurd situation, a “catch-22” (after the novel by Joseph Heller–another one to add to the list). During his teen years, my son, as he sat back in the passenger seat of my Subaru, his baseball cap pushed down to cover his eyes, refused to attend a production of Godot with me at Stratford. Why would I want to see two men sitting around talking, waiting for somebody who never comes? Now, as adult, he looks forward to his first live performance of this play.

When I taught Godot, I remember telling students, “Read Act I. Don’t worry whether you understand anything in it. Just read it with an open mind.” And later, “This play is like a big bowl of stew. From time to time, ingredients such a beef, carrots, potatoes, will rise to the surface, not all at the same time. The possible meanings in this play are like that–they rise to the surface, disconnected to one another. Then they disappear again into the stew. You’ll find something for yourself there.” I looked forward to the next class meeting, to students’ quizzical faces. Perhaps like me, in Waiting for Godot, students encountered for the first time a work which did not give answers but rather asked questions, ones which only students could answer for themselves. Perhaps, like me, some of them now recall both the humor and the uncertainty of the play. Perhaps they understand its long-reaching impact.

And perhaps Beckett’s play is an apt metaphor for where we are at this moment–in isolation, unsure of what, if anything, will save us (a vaccine, tests for antibodies, a new president).

We do what we can, for now. I sing songs, maybe even dance when I ask Alexa to play Gordon Lightfoot or Chicago. I keep myself occupied, not with “busy” activities, but with tasks that have meaning– helping my students to finish a stressful term amidst a pandemic, attending Zoom meetings with my church and my literary community, calling to check up on friends who are more isolated than I, watching and reading real news to stay updated on the virus, spending time with my partner/husband, talking and watching films and well-done series on TV.

After all, we can be happy now, maybe not in the same ways we’re used to thinking of “happiness.” In the midst of despair, hopeless, uncertainty, Vladimir urges Estragon to find his happiness within the gloom of waiting:
Estragon: What am I to say?
Vladimir: Say, I am happy.
Estragon: I am happy.
Vladimir: So am I.
Estragon: So am I.
Vladimir: We are happy.
Estragon: We are happy. *

There is No Third Act, and
Godot Does Nothing

I read about this mysterious chap
in French class, fall of 1966,
was just engaged, ripe for discontent,
disillusion, wondering why I
needed someone so desperately,
looking for meaning in a phrase
or a glance from anyone with
special knowledge, an explanation
of being. a personal god with white
beard quaquaquaqua outside time
without extension who . . . loves
us dearly with exceptions for reasons
unknown but time will tell…

At the end of Act Two I searched
for another page, another act or
scene to make sense of what
was not there. I thought my copy
was defective, just as I was,
without a clear path, without
a goal, without a savior.

Minute after minute I waited
with two men by a tree,
in the moonlight.

What does he do, Mr. Godot?
Vladimir asks the Boy. He
does nothing, the Boy says.

There is no third act.

From Portals: A Memoir in Verse. Kelsay Books, 2019
web site

*Samuel Beckett, Waiting for Godot: Tragicomedy in 2 Acts. New York: Grove Press, 2011.

As I join my friends–poets, church members, yogis, book lovers–in our mutual state of awareness about the imminent threat of the COVID-19 virus, I find that my perspective about life is changing. Despite the bombardment by news media of updates, I am grateful. Grateful for friends from past and present life, for family, those who have passed and those still with us. I am grateful for the rich literary life I’ve been afforded by my decades of work as a professor and by the friends who have share the literary life with me.

One such group called itself “Carpe Diem” after the secret society portrayed in the film Dead Poets Society. Literally translated as “seize the day,” the theme represents how the film’s Professor John Keating urged his students to live, by seizing the beauty and fullness of every day instead of living by standards defined by others. Our reading group lasted for more than two decades, and though we haven’t met in a few years, the reading and discussion we shared has stayed with me in this “time of epidemic.” One book in particular haunts me today. Blindness, by Jose Saramago, portrays a sudden epidemic of blindness which afflicts many in an unnamed city. The victims are quarantined (a potent word these days) in an asylum and forced to establish new realities in their lives. Though their sight is restored as mysteriously as it was taken from them, their lives will never be the same.

For now, for today, I celebrate what is before me. I celebrate the ones who have been there for me and others through times of beauty, sickness, and loss. I celebrate my marriage of twenty-three years to Roger and all he has brought to my life. Thank you, Roger, for your ways.

My Husband is a Liberal at Heart

He hides his politics in silence.
He’s an engineer, and after all, engineers
are supposed to be
rational
left-brained
balanced
organized.

How can such a person be a liberal?

He drives a big truck and plays golf for
sport. He does all the cooking, and he
will care for a pet as if it were his child.
When we put down our cat Butterscotch,
he cried alongside me, remembering how
she came down into his basement workroom
to keep him company while he chiseled and
ground away at metal and wood.

He thinks of others’ feelings, finding a way
to soothe a friend’s pain, or to call me on
my cell phone after a minor argument to
tell me he loves me whatever happens.

He nurtured my aging mother when I
was at work. Took her for rides in her
wheelchair on the short path around her
nursing home, gathering leaves in the
fall, or hearing her say, This is the forest
primeval about all the green growth
around her. She asked every single time,
Where is that from? Though he didn’t
remember Longfellow’s Evangeline (he’s
an engineer after all), he behaved
as if it was a new question, discussing the
possibilities of authorship.

He painted my mother’s fingernails,
asking her if she wanted summer pink,
or a fall deep orange/red, like the leaves they
gathered. I can see him now, sitting with his
large body bent over her bed tray,
working with her splitting nails, cleaning
the fungus under each one,
filing, cutting, painting, until Bee was the
envy of the nursing home. Her son even
paints her nails, they said.

After she died, I promised never to forget
these things, especially the fingernails, or
his gentleness, sitting with her to listen
to The Great Gatsby on audio, or bringing
poetry with music tapes to her room to
play and listen.

My husband is at heart a liberal. In his
silence, he played for my mother her music
at her deathbed. In his quiet he checked
her pulse, put his large, rough hands
before her face and nodded.

Portals: A Memoir in Verse, poetry, from Kelsay Books
Searching for Nannie B:  Connecting Three Generations of Southern Women. Ardent Writers Press
My Heart Wears No Colors, poetry, from FutureCycle Press

In recent months, I have faced the challenges of early-stage breast cancer. I’ve shared with a few friends, who have provided overwhelming support. As I continue down this path of tests, biopsy, diagnosis, surgery, medical decisions between natural and main-stream medicine, I find it challenging sometimes to remember the beauty of life, despite its darkness.

One of my sources of strength lies in the work and life of my long-time friend, writer Frederick Manfred, who passed in 1994 of a brain tumor, and who spent years toiling to report, record and interpret the American experience, both Native and immigrant. The span of his over 50 years of dedication to writing and away from other pursuits produced rich novels and essay which will live on, hopefully, for future generations.

Fred was a hopeful man, one who spoke out in support of labor and for justice that comes from a real democracy (Hubert Humphrey asked him to join his campaign for Senate in 1948).

Fred was also a flawed human being, just like the rest of us. However, his gravestone acknowledges that he embraced all of life, the beautiful and the painful. A quote on his gravestone reveals his view that “It was all marvelous. I don’t regret a minute of it, even the pain and hunger were sweet to have. It was life, not death, and all moments of life are very precious.”

All Marvelous

I’m going to punch the next man in the nose
that gets ugly about you, wrote Feike Feikema
to Henry Miller on March 11, 1944.

1.

All those years ago, when I was Feike, not Fred,
I dreamed of the marvelous, as Henry wrote,
It’s always beautiful. Anything that is marvelous
is beautiful. Indeed, nothing but the marvelous is beautiful.

Yes, that’s what I thought, a young man with wife,
baby on the way, and only one book to my name. Thought Miller
was the cat’s meow. Would fight for him, would punch the man
who said he should lay off the sex, for god’s sake.
Women would blanch at your words.

And he was. The cat’s meow, that is. I liked Henry.
Liked how he tapped into the core of the lizard
in people, primal urge, sex, love, babies, working folk,
plowing land, people seen only in Hardy or Steinbeck.

That’s what I always wanted, to be like Henry Miller.
I loved women, despite having a wife. But it was all about
being real, understanding human urging. It was what
god put us here for. It is all marvelous . . .. very precious.

2.

All moments of life are very precious. Fred’s right, I think. This
place in me, this pain, I embrace it, like a small cancer that visits
and waits, yearns for an exit, waits until it’s cut away
like a rotten tooth, leaving only a gaping hole.

That hole will close, a forgotten crater in the moon,
a one step for me away from the notion that life can be free
of pain and hunger, that I will somehow be blessed with life,
not death, that there will never be an ending to this
compromised, bitter-sweet existence. Like the two tramps,
I will wonder if I’d be better off alone, me for myself. And yet,
and yet, I will wait, never alone, I will wait, always
tormented with accursed time. I will wait, for the sweetness
of pain and hunger, for how marvelous, how very precious,
it will all be.

From Portals: A Memoir in Verse, by Nancy Owen Nelson, Kelsay Books, 2019.

Happy New Year in the first year of a decade!  I’m launching this blog to connect in a communitarian and literary fashion.  We begin this new year with fear that we are on the verge of yet another war.  My hope is for finding ways of peace and understanding.  

From my recently published poetry book Portals: A Memoir in Verse, I offer this effort. 

Robert E Lee’s Yoga Pipe Dream

What if,

before Appomattox, before Gettysburg,
Robert E Lee had practiced yoga?  In a parallel
universe, he could have found that

doing Downward Facing Dog would bring
his world view upside down,
usurp his truth to say that no man should own another,
that stretching his legs and calves against
the earth this way would do better for him
watching his men die
at the hands of the Yanks.

What if,

before Chancellorsville, his greatest victory,
when he sent his soldiers with doomed
Stonewall Jackson to take the left flank
around the backside of Union General
Hooker, the man who wanted a dictator to win
this bloody war,

what if instead,

Lee did a Sun Salutation, pointing his arms
straight above him, heaven-ward, while
he folded forward, stepped back into a plank,
then lowered himself down on his belly,
humbled to the earth?

What if then Lee pushed himself up on his hands
to Downward Facing Dog again,
stepped forward
into another fold,
humbled himself
toward earth
once more,

if he then slowly, carefully, followed his breath,
raised up to his full height, arms lifted above
hoary head toward heaven,
then lowered his arms through to heart center?

What if,
instead of the glory, the call for courage,
the honor and passion for region,
he chose country and peace
freedom to enslaved?

Then we would not care about statues,
about words or torches,
signs or marches.

Instead, we would know the prana
or life,
the ongoing of peace.

Portals: A Memoir in Verse, poetry, from Kelsay Books

I like to live always at the beginnings of life, not at their end. We all lose some of our faith under the oppression of mad leaders, insane history, pathologic cruelties of daily life. I am by nature always beginning and believing and so I find your company more fruitful than that of, say, Edmund Wilson, who asserts his opinions, beliefs, and knowledge as the ultimate verity. Older people fall into rigid patterns. Curiosity, risk, exploration are forgotten by them. You have not yet discovered that you have a lot to give, and that the more you give the more riches you will find in yourself. It amazed me that you felt that each time you write a story you gave away one of your dreams and you felt the poorer for it. But then you have not thought that this dream is planted in others, others begin to live it too, it is shared, it is the beginning of friendship and love. ”

[…]

You must not fear, hold back, count or be a miser with your thoughts and feelings. It is also true that creation comes from an overflow, so you have to learn to intake, to imbibe, to nourish yourself and not be afraid of fullness. The fullness is like a tidal wave which then carries you, sweeps you into experience and into writing. Permit yourself to flow and overflow, allow for the rise in temperature, all the expansions and intensifications. Something is always born of excess: great art was born of great terrors, great loneliness, great inhibitions, instabilities, and it always balances them. If it seems to you that I move in a world of certitudes, you, par contre, must benefit from the great privilege of youth, which is that you move in a world of mysteries. But both must be ruled by faith.”

From Brainpickings: