Shekinah, grant me
this grace: let these hands
shape dough once more,
let me be the one to light
the morning fire, to stir the pot of soup
with the big silver ladle.
Let me seek the blessings
you have hidden all around us
in plain sight.
Let me bend down once more
to lift the snowy cover
and grasp the crisp lettuce
heads, let me feel that cold
shock, saying You
are alive – now kneel down
and give thanks.

(c) Adrie Lester 2011

Grandmothers, please come

back.  I need you

now that you are vanished.

Please bring fried chicken and pickles,

mashed potatoes with gravy, gumbo

and rice, a shrimp po-boy

from that little dive in Slidell.

Is it too much to ask?

I have questions for you,

now that your answers are buried.

How to create a new child while raising

one already, how to remember

the first home while building another,

how to piece this quilt,

how to go on giving.

If you cannot come yourself,

send a messenger – I will know her

by her stubborn will, by the bowl

of oyster soup in her hand.

(c) Adrie Lester 2011

Conception

The week you enter our lives,

it rains and rains. The rooster

shakes his tail feathers in the drizzle

and crows for the first time.

I had wanted a life ready

for you – sheep grazing

in the orchard, every room

painted the right color.

We knew already the ways

we would fail you.

In the end, we were no less greedy

than the gods. We took clay

from our bodies and made

a vessel for you, we called you here

that you could see the light

in the mornings.

(c) Adrie Lester September 2006

* * *

As you may have guessed already from the date, I wrote this when I was pregnant with Ella.  I find that this time around (yes, we’re going to have a baby!!), it still rings true to me.  We have sheep now (who ate the peach trees, ahem), but none of the painting is finished, and we are as imperfect as ever.  We are all so, so excited.  I am quite tired, though, so forgive my slower-than-usual responses to your lovely comments and emails.  Thank you, as always, for sharing this journey with us.

Throw Yourself Like Seed

by Miguel de Unamuno (translated by Robert Bly)

Shake off this sadness, and recover your spirit

sluggish you will never see the wheel of fate

that brushes your heel as it turns going by,

the man who wants to live is the man in whom life is abundant.

Now you are only giving food to that final pain

which is slowly winding you in the nets of death,

but to live is to work, and the only thing which lasts

is the work; start then, turn to the work.

Throw yourself like seed as you walk, and into your own field,

don’t turn your face for that would be to turn it to death,

and do not let the past weigh down your motion.

Leave what’s alive in the furrow, what’s dead in yourself,

for life does not move in the same way as a group of clouds;

from your work you will be able one day to gather yourself.

Taking Joy

Twenty seven now, I am ready.

I gather all the old depression journals,
the teenage collages and melancholic cds, and I put them out
on the curb.  Don’t leave us, they cry,
you need us, we are part of you.
I turned my back, I forgave us all
and walked inside to this life,
where I am mother not child,
I took up her silken hand and kissed it,
joyfully.

October 2010

(c) Adrie Lester

* * *

Have a wonderful weekend everyone!

(Joining Ginny and many other for Yarn Along).

This is clearly going to be known as the winter of mittens.  With Ben and Ella both mittened up, and my hands getting numb from cold as I type and knit in the computer room while listening to archived Beacon shows, I cast on these Toasties with some of the alpaca wool leftover from Ella’s vest, from our neighbors at Craigieburn Farm.

This week, I just got this book from the library, and already the first poem has made me feel (as Emily Dickinson once said, I believe) as if the top of my head had been blown off.  In a good way.

If this be the world, let us continue
as we are today-clean pants
and green sweaters, the river pounding
below us, buttery light coming
through tall windows onto worn
wooden floors. If the truth
cannot be known,
if this be the world, let it go
on.  Where leaves have fallen,
let them fall again.

(c) 2005

I dream that I am a cabbage.

I find an unloved piece of land

and I begin to plant:

two rows of cabbages, and then

I fill the woolen earth with more

seeds.  Carrots, potatoes, squash, wheat.

They grow taller, I tend them gently, at night

I sleep in a bed of soft leaves.

When they are ready, my little cabbages gather their silk dresses

and begin to walk.  They each find another

piece of earth, hidden in cities or empty fields,

they begin to plant.

(c) April 2010

Even though truly warm weather is a ways off, and I’ll probably still be wearing the occasional sweater in May, my little polar bear was already walking around in short sleeves yesterday.

And also, some new words.  Definitely in progress, but here we go.

* * *

March

by Adrie Lester

Not yet

ready,

but here we are.  The moon, full,

startling on the snow.  The taps

on the maple trees, gathering, pulling out

that life blood, as if we thought

it was owed us.  And what is owed us?

This night, this moon?

Or this breath, in

out, ours for now, soon to be taken back

and taken

forward.

(c) 2010

Grateful for Solstice Bulbs still blooming, and that sweet horse outside my kitchen window, munching his hay in the snow storm.

Grateful to have renewed my commitment to a daily yoga practice (even if it’s only ten minutes, with Ella beside me saying, “Now let’s do this pose, Mama!  No, this one!”)

Grateful to have finished at least one sweater for Ella this winter – my first ever!  (It’s the Baby Sophisticate pattern, with added pockets.)  Why I chose to make my first sweater with a pattern I had to fudge for a bigger size the whole way through is anybody’s guess, but I am so thankful it worked!

Grateful for Ben’s burst of deep winter cleaning, which purged (among other things) the pile of junk behind Ella in these photos!  Hoorah.

Grateful for hope in dark times, and feeling blessed in adversity.  Remembering this:

The Fox

Of course I thought of you
when I saw him-
the blue-grey fox waiting in the frosted grass
for my car to move on
so that he could cross the road.
I thought how greedy I am-
I want and want-
and, amazingly, I have been given everything
I ever wanted.

The fox and I watched each other,
and when I passed he ran across
to the next field of corn stumps.
I thought of him all day,
holding him behind my eyes
until I could tell him to you,
could say that somehow
I am given even
what I have not thought
to ask for.

(c) Adrie Lester, 2004