Day #44: Community of Poetry and Song

#44

 

 

Once again we talk about tribe, or community.  I am a single person with many friends.  I feel so blessed today because I am saturated with the feel of   community.  At noontime today I sat with my friend, Annie H.  Next to us was a woman I taught at Marlboro with and her father who is 87 years old and next to them was an elderly gentleman with his daughter and her son who may have been 3 weeks old.  Grandfather was holding the baby and he started to fuss, everyone thought they had a helping idea, but Mom was the answer and she had left to shop.   Meanwhile, Annie started singing to me, she was telling me a story and singing me an old Irish song and the 87 year old gentleman, who I believe had memory issues, joined in and they sang the song through without forgetting a word, and the other man rocked his grandson.  All of a sudden we were a table of 7, singing in Spanish, singing in English, conveying stories of this and that.  I got good advice for finding a publisher and caught up on Marlboro gossip, and the baby, he got held until his mother brought back what he wanted, milk. The picture is Annie singing to Tito.

 

Then tonight I went back for the Valentine Poetry Reading.  100 people crammed together and listened to 25 poets read a poem about love and food.  Some of it was silly, some of it was sensuous, some of it was sad, and some of it was dramatic.  It was red, and soft and full of avocado and date.  I am blessed to live in a town that supports warmth on a very very cold February night.  

 

I didn't submit a poem to read tonight.  I will next year.  I would have liked to have read.  So instead, I am posting an old poem of mine written in 2005 which is not about food, avocado, dates or Valentines.  But it is about love and it is about creativity and watching it bloom.   

 

The Wind and The Blow 2

 

You wrote another video

for the bears last night.

A new one based on

The Wind and The Blow,

you called it 2.

The last one had 17 unicorns,

rainbow fairies who

left Fantasia to come

act in your video.

This one has 5 unicorns

who are teaching you,

a people, how to fly.

"Flap your arms now,

fast, flap them fast."

Well, maybe we need

fairy dust.

The dinosaurs are sometimes

good and sometimes bad.

Snakes don't have feet, you know.

Let's take the bears fishing

If we catch too many we

can put them in the refrigerator.

The music goes like this.

The bears are impressed by

your talents, they talk

about how good it is.

They whisper in my ear,

"especially since she's only four."

 

This picture is of the same snowboarder ice sculpture.  He was carved from 2 large blocks of ice that separated so his legs have been severed from his torso.  He is melting, but someone picked him up so he wouldn't get damaged anymore.