For a reading in an old church last weekend, I chose ghost poems. I’ve written a lot of them, even though I’m agnostic about ghosts. I feel certain lost loved ones hovering occasionally, or the versions of them preserved in my mind. I’ve had odd Ouija board experiences and heard strange voices seeming to whisper from the borders of sleep. Yet part of me rejects the idea as too awful. Certain politicians, well, if they’re doomed to haunt their ill-conceived ballrooms after death, fine. But most humans, after long difficult lives, deserve a better renovation: escape from suffering and worry.
Anyway, for the Samhain event, I read a few poems then sat down in a pew to listen to Jim Peterson. I’d recently read his new-ish book The Towheaded Stone Thrower, about the life and death of his wildly beloved wife, and it left a sort of halo around the world. The autumn seemed brighter and more beautiful, because he had reminded me that darkness was coming.
Then a shadow caught my eye. Something about its movement said cat. But I was in a deconsecrated little church in the woods, next to an old graveyard: no pets. I turned to look harder and glimpsed, more clearly, the fleeting shape of a tail.
My heart started pounding. My first, highly questionable reaction: I’d actually seen a ghost this time!
Then a living cat ducked under the pew in front of me, allowed me to pet its utterly real warm furry head, and drank from a cup of water I’d left on the floor.
More facts: two days later, amid a paperwork tsunami at work, the so-called blue tsunami hit. Even amid cheering news trickling in Tuesday evening, I’d gone to bed with a sense of doom, expecting to wake up to an enraged president bombing someone in vengeance. That specter hasn’t come to pass (yet?–the appointment of Stephen Miller is ominous). I’m sleeping a little better. Fear hasn’t vanished–hope for change is not yet actual improvement in people’s lives, which a disparate, feuding cast of Dems and independents may not be able to conjure–yet dread has ebbed to a more manageable wariness.
The mundane continues to be plague-y in small ways. All my boots gave up the ghost at once, the dishwasher as well, and it was a struggle to find time to replace them (not to mention how costs have risen–oof). After weeks of the letter “a” not working on my laptop keyboard, though, I finally contacted the university’s IT guy, who couldn’t fix it either and ordered me a new machine. A few hitches around Erika Meitner’s visit to campus smoothed out; her reading from Assembled Audience was wonderful and I loved how she talked about poetry, witness, and speaking hard truths to my class. And my side quest to find rock tripe finally worked. This may not excite you, I know. It’s a famine food that causes gastric distress unless you boil the hell out of it. But I’d promised to write a poem about this lichen for a forthcoming anthology, and it makes a big difference to spot it on boulders just off a trail, amid leaves that look similar. I clambered up close to examine the papillae on its light-colored side, the velvety dark roughness on the surface that clings to rock. The weak-sauce poem I’d been drafting in stray moments rapidly gained body.
What I’m working toward this weekend, besides a post I technically didn’t have time to write, are two presentations I’ll be giving at the Poets for Science Gathering at the Wick Poetry Center at Kent State, Ohio, on November 13th and 14th. I proposed and will moderate “Mycelial: Inspired by Fungi” with Mildred K. Barya and Anne Haven McDonnell; we’ve constructed a mushroomy PowerPoint, I’ll read and project Mycocosmic‘s “Underpoem [Fire Fungus],” and we’ll address in various ways what a fungal poetics might look like (I’ll report more on that around Thanksgiving). Later I was invited to sub in for Brian Turner on the panel “Lyric Intensities and Scientific Precision” with Charlotte Pence and Erika Meitner. There I’m going to talk about strategies from Marianne Moore, Samiya Bashir, and one of my own poems. As usual, I’m more excited to hear from my co-panelists than to speak myself, but in general the program looks terrific. Now, if I can get through the drive without my undead sciatica flaring…
One last note, for now, on the uncanny: we just caught the documentary You Can See Everything, after a couple of friends insisted it was unmissable and that the strategy of intense close-ups made it worth watching on the big screen. They were right. I still feel addled by the characters (to what extent is Elizabeth Holmes a talented manipulator, sociopathic, narcissistic, and radically dissociated from her various selves by trauma?–I don’t understand what I saw). The film’s funhouse approach to “documentary” resonates with questions of authenticity posed by other arts, including poetry. It’s fair to hate the film, but it IS haunting.
Here’s to the remediation of political toxic waste sites and manifestations of the mycelial connections I feel with many geographically distant writers. Also the letter “a,” rock tripe, functional boots, and thirsty cats. Good spirits can manifest, even as winter closes in.
