A Poem A Day...Yes!

Here's what Garrison Keillor had to offer in yesterday's The Writer's Almanac for June 11, 2009:

It's the birthday of poet David Lehman, (books by this author) born in New York City in 1948. One day in 1987, the day after he had moved into a new house, he was driving back to his old rental to get the last of his stuff, and he had a sudden inspiration: to create a yearly anthology that would feature the best poems that had been published that year, and each year a different poet would select the poems. He figured that since he had just moved into a new house, it was a good time to start a new project. Publishers were hesitant because they thought that poetry would automatically lose money. But Scribner finally agreed to publish it, and The Best American Poetry 1988, edited by John Ashbery, was a huge success. David Lehman has served as the series editor ever since, and the Best American Poetry books continue to come out every September and are very popular.

David Lehman was inspired by Robert Bly, who was in turn inspired by William Stafford, to wake up early in the morning and write a poem, one poem every morning. He did that on and off for years, and once he managed to write poems for 186 consecutive days. He published two books of his favorite daily poems: The Daily Mirror (2000) and The Evening Sun (2002).

Today I woke up early, as I do most days, but this time I decided not to try to go back to sleep (okay, I tried for about 15 minutes). The sun rose, officially, at 5:01 PDT in Walla Walla, Washington, where I stayed the night just because I've always loved the name Walla Walla ("W, my name is Wanda and my husband's name is Walter and we come from Walla Walla with a ship loaded down with wallets"). It took me nearly eight hours to drive there from Coeur d'Alene, Idaho, yesterday and I was beat. But I was parked with Michelle's rear pointed toward the east (the head of my bed) and it was impossible to sleep, even with the mask on, which I usually wear at WalMart, their being fully lighted 24 hours a day.

It was already about 70 degrees outside at 6:30, which made it easier to get up, so I took a walk, had some cereal, and enjoyed the warm. I was on the road a lot earlier since I couldn't use my laptop, it being totally out of juice from having watched Meryl Streep in a movie called "Dark Matter" last night ($1 rental at WalMart: they got it all). My review: it was not bad until the end, which sucked.

So here I am in Sunnyside, WA, about 40 miles out of Yakima, at a little coffee shop with free WiFi, juicing up the laptop, checking email, and, while I'm at it, recording my thoughts. I like this poem-every-day idea. Maybe when I'm dead my heirs will find them and publish them posthumously and give them to friends and relatives to remember me by. Move over, Emily Dickinson...not.

I've been taking way too many pictures of stuff that won't translate very well to the blog, the kind of stuff I have always thought would not make a good picture (someone else's idea of beautiful scenery, ho-hum), which is why I didn't take many photos before I got the digital camera: the photo is never as good as what the eye sees, so what's the point? The point, of course, is to be reminded how beautiful or interesting the scenery was, but you, Dear Reader, have to suffer through them, too. Well, you can just skip that part. Tomorrow I'll wake up early and write a poem. You can skip that part, too.

The truck is for perspective. These were some serious hills.


No, this is not a golf course, although that's what it looks like from a distance. Sorry for the poor photo quality: it was taken through the dirty windshield at 60 mph.

I took several pictures of birches, but this one also has an orchard in the foreground so I chose it as representative of the trees (in the background) that Robert Frost immortalized in his poem, which is longer than I remembered it, so be prepared...

Birches

by Robert Frost
When I see birches bend to left and right
Across the lines of straighter darker trees,
I like to think some boy's been swinging them.
But swinging doesn't bend them down to stay
As ice-storms do. Often you must have seen them
Loaded with ice a sunny winter morning
After a rain. They click upon themselves
As the breeze rises, and turn many-colored
As the stir cracks and crazes their enamel.
Soon the sun's warmth makes them shed crystal shells
Shattering and avalanching on the snow-crust--
Such heaps of broken glass to sweep away
You'd think the inner dome of heaven had fallen.
They are dragged to the withered bracken by the load,
And they seem not to break; though once they are bowed
So low for long, they never right themselves:
You may see their trunks arching in the woods
Years afterwards, trailing their leaves on the ground
Like girls on hands and knees that throw their hair
Before them over their heads to dry in the sun.
But I was going to say when Truth broke in
With all her matter-of-fact about the ice-storm
I should prefer to have some boy bend them
As he went out and in to fetch the cows--
Some boy too far from town to learn baseball,
Whose only play was what he found himself,
Summer or winter, and could play alone.
One by one he subdued his father's trees
By riding them down over and over again
Until he took the stiffness out of them,
And not one but hung limp, not one was left
For him to conquer. He learned all there was
To learn about not launching out too soon
And so not carrying the tree away
Clear to the ground. He always kept his poise
To the top branches, climbing carefully
With the same pains you use to fill a cup
Up to the brim, and even above the brim.
Then he flung outward, feet first, with a swish,
Kicking his way down through the air to the ground.
So was I once myself a swinger of birches.
And so I dream of going back to be.
It's when I'm weary of considerations,
And life is too much like a pathless wood
Where your face burns and tickles with the cobwebs
Broken across it, and one eye is weeping
From a twig's having lashed across it open.
I'd like to get away from earth awhile
And then come back to it and begin over.
May no fate willfully misunderstand me
And half grant what I wish and snatch me away
Not to return. Earth's the right place for love:
I don't know where it's likely to go better.
I'd like to go by climbing a birch tree,
And climb black branches up a snow-white trunk
Toward heaven, till the tree could bear no more,
But dipped its top and set me down again.
That would be good both going and coming back.
One could do worse than be a swinger of birches.

Onward to Seattle! Hope your day is GRAND.