[stylist] Poem by last night's telephone gathering's Special Guest- Margo

[Robert Leslie Newman]

A Word in Edgewise
Reckless Blooming
By Margo LaGattuta

Everything is blooming most recklessly; if it were voices instead of colors,

there would be an unbelievable shrieking into the heart of the night.
~Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters of Rainer Maria Rilke


     I love the shrieking that's going on in my yard. The red and yellow
tulips by the deck are humming a lilting Dutch melody, while the apple
blossoms out back are harmonizing with the trillium down by the creek. And
the songbirds! They're playing an opus in G Major outside my bedroom window.
It's a symphony of rich burbling sounds filling the air with spring's
eternal song of "yes . . . yes . . . yes!" 
     Every year this happens. You'd think I'd be used to it by now, but no.
It feels original each time. And it gets under my skin. I walk with more
bounce in my step. I sing along with the lilacs in my heart, even hitting
the right notes once in a while. 
I start to think all things are possible right about now in the spring. All
things that just weeks ago, in the dead days of winter, didn't seem possible
at all. The relationships I haven't been able to work out could get better.
The jobs I haven't been able to accomplish could get easier. I could lose
weight, find a publisher for my book, get more sleep and make my checkbook
balance. (Well, maybe the spring fever won't go that far.) 
     It's the greening of my inner life that's going on, to match the
greening and yellowing and pluming of the outer world. Those forsythia
bushes are contagious. I walk outside and all heaven breaks loose inside me.
Poems pop into my mind when I least expect them, and I have to grab a pen to
write them down fast. Here comes one now:

Leaving Gaylord, Michigan

Trees, I like trees; they hold down
the dirt and just stand there
while I'm too busy to stop.
Trees get bare and don't
care about it, then explode
in their own green time. I'm

like that too when I
face the sun straight on.
I close down the shoots
and stop growing for awhile.

Then one May moment in the bark
of an old cypress thought
I can't hold it in anymore.
Something green and new
starts to form behind my eyes.

     The title refers to my cabin in Gaylord, which every year I have to
close up and then reopen with the change in seasons. It marks a kind of
hibernation for me, like the grizzly bears have. I haven't been up there yet
this year, but finding my way up north again is the next experience fixing
to sing in my heart. I know that new poems are waiting for me up in the
hills and valleys of Wilderness Valley. I just have to take a walk deep in
the trees to find them. I just have to see the reckless lady slippers
blooming and whistling in my mother's wildflower garden again. 
     Margo LaGattuta, MFA, won the 2005 Mark Twain Award for her writing and
the 2009 Founders Award from National Federation of State Poetry Societies
for a poem. She has four published books and offers ongoing writing
workshops. Contact her at lagapvp at aol.com.









 

Robert Leslie Newman

President, Omaha Chapter NFB

President, NFB Writers' Division

Division Website

 <http://www.nfb-writers-division.org/> http://www.nfb-writers-division.org

Chair, Newsletter Publication committee

Personal Website-

 <http://www.thoughtprovoker.info/> http://www.thoughtprovoker.info