Politics and Poetry

My desk is overflowing with family and dinner and dogs, with lovers in San Francisco that send notes and blow kisses, all delivered by the moon in bouquets of sweet words that I’ve erased and emphasized and categorized since December.

The sunrays dance in my backyard and I can hear the children and the relatives knocking—tap, tap, tap, yak, yak, yak—pining to play, shop, run, or sigh. I am not too stubborn to ask “What is the meaning of all this?” or too self-righteous to wonder if I’m on track and living in God’s will or maybe in that of my Grandmother Renate, the first one to have shown me that something large, empathetic, bountiful, and forgiving does exist, even alongside tyrants, murderers, and genocidal maniacs. It was under a willow in the neighbor’s yard, the kind that wept strong branches grown to cradle a sick child left all alone in the dirt, where I began to understand life. It was under that tree, where the sun never reached and the earth was always cold, that caterpillars verified its cycle.

I went back to that tree recently. My dog had wandered off and I was searching for her along the periphery of my mother’s property. The tree’s branches had been cut short and the earth beneath was exposed and dry. Although her trunk looked naked, it was still inviting me to curl my body around and find comfort in the stillness and the sweetness of the sun baking on clean wood. I was struck by the memory of a world before cable and computers, a world even before death, when war was history and we were busy recovering, piece by piece, year by year, from our past. It reminded me of a time before I was aware of racism and bigotry. My only religion was the Constitution my father taught me. I also learned that sometimes good people did bad things, too.

My family celebrated American holidays simply because we were American. When bad memories ached from deep inside, we released the foul air slowly by pretending with spoons that we were the Pointer Sisters and by playing Ravel’s Boléro with chopsticks and spatulas. There was no sadness that “Here Comes the Sun” on the record player couldn’t fix—lying on my stomach behind the couch, ear pressed up against the speaker, my head inevitably filled with secret playground kisses that could heal any suffering.

I sat down to blog about democracy and language today, but when the tick, tick, tick of a poem rattles, there’s nothing to do but let it out. Like a branch that breaks off of a willow tree, death begets life, old becomes new, and from its memories I know I will to survive.

Comments

[sarah mac]

kate...you just brought tears to my eyes and in a good way...which is so long overdue these days. it's beautiful to know that even when the mind has been burdened (dare i say, saturated) by the harsh realities of life, something so pure and sweet not only exists, but demands expression. besos!

[chi]

beautiful indeed. sometimes all that is needed is to pause and remember our own selves.