poetry

Vermont Postcard

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 3 Comments

A few years ago, an enormous storm dumped gravel on local farmers’ fields and generally wrecked significant agricultural damage. Farmers around here are small, small-scale, no one ever gets adequate insurance compensation, and the storm hurt.

I bought this sketch below at a community fundraiser for local farmers at the Woodbury Town Hall, where the people from the surrounding towns came together for a dinner and live music, and many folks donated all kinds of beautiful handmade things that switched from hand to hand with some cash.

Some money, no doubt, was raised. The night was a goodwill, community gesture after a bad event. This is the better, more generous, gracious element of Vermont. We are not always so kind.

Walking around this small town where I live – Hardwick – whether to the post office, or crawling under broken boards with my visiting nephews to get into the  empty granite sheds for an “historic” tour, I keep returning to the notion that more deeply understanding all the variations of this small town, I would gain some tenor of illumination.

Just to mix things up in the little-light month of December, I’ll aim to share a few snips of life within walking distance.

Whether the recollection is of fascist Italy in the 1920s, of Nazi Germany in the 1930s, of the Soviet Union during the Great Terror of 1937-38, or of the purges in communist eastern Europe in the 1940s and ’50s, people who were living in fear of repression remembered how their neighbors treated them. A smile, a handshake, or a word of greeting – banal gestures in a normal situation – took on great significance. When friends, colleagues, and acquaintances looked away or crossed the street to avoid contact, fear grew.

–Timothy Snyder, On Tyranny: Twenty Lessons From the Twentieth Century

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Thread of Thanks

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

Before I turned off the lights and went home from the library the other day, I checked out a ‘thanksgiving’ tree a child had made and left behind, maybe to dry, maybe because the project was forgotten. Branches were stuck in a mason jar, with colored leaves tied on with white yarn, handwritten with the child’s thanks.

Whoever this child is, she or he had painted the jar a brilliant turquoise blue, and the branches were so large, they nearly tipped the jar over.

I read a few written in purple marker in a child’s handwriting: mom, my bike, the sky, chocolate.

These November days, the dark is ubiquitous. I rise in the dark with the mewling kittens. Before I begin dinner, the dark has already wrapped us again, familiar, like a long-term visitor we must endure. The heady days of an evening swim in the lake, of splashing while the late sunset descends, will return.

Here’s my own offering, from Julie Cadwallader-Staub’s Milk:

… and it was all too much then –
the endless stream of groceries meals
bills illnesses laundry jobs no sleep –
so to sit in the rocking chair was sweet respite,
to do just one thing:
watch the baby
drain the profusion of milk out of me
watch the baby
become so contented that nursing faded into sleep…

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Radiance

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 2 Comments

My 12-year-old went wild with the row of tiny icicles along our roof. They’re back! It takes me a moment to figure out what she’s saying. When I do, I jam on my boots, step out, and reach up for two tiny sticks of ice.

Inside our sunny kitchen, I offer her the icicles. She shares them with her kitten. The ice melts quickly – it disappears to wet fur, and then that’s all.

The kitten wraps his paws in stray yarn. Our day moves along. First sprinkles of snow: beautiful.

What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.

– John Steinbeck

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The Shape of A House

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 2 Comments

In the moonlight last night, with the stars overhead, my daughters and I walked up the hill to our house with a single window lit. Our former house, tall and narrow with a cupola, always reminded me of sailing ship, steady through sunny days and pelting sleet.

Our house now is square, its windows like eyes to the mountains and the valley. Entering feels like greeting the embrace of folded arms.

In the village at night, the houses are alive, even those sleeping with darkened windows. Enter our kitchen door and discover our white tin table strewn with hand-scrawled notes, hair ties, library books, a wooden car my child made, Halloween chocolates. What’s on the tables of all these neighbors, I wonder. Just how fine a photography mosaic all our tables might make.

“In a Station of the Metro”

The apparition of these faces in the crowd;
Petals on a wet, black bough.

– Ezra Pound

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No Fear

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

I’ve heard authors read work from mesmerizing poetry to an essay about a colonics session – but the Argentinian cartoonist I just met likely ranks at the very top. Incredibly famous outside the verdant realm of Vermont, the cartoonist sat on the floor with the kids and told stories and made the little ones laugh, and assured them they could all draw, too.

Even after the adults tried to close the hour, he kept on answering the kids’ questions, saying, This is an important question. This is good.

At the very end, a boy asked how he could become a cartoonist. The cartoonist said, Like this. Tell your parents you will need a book without these things – and here the cartoonist drew four parallel lines on a piece of paper – those are not helpful. You will need a black marker. And then you are on your way.

Great rule of thumb: when in doubt, get rid of the lines.

In my opinion, childhood is one of the most intriguing phases in life… For instance, when they (kids) draw, they do it with such freedom…! We adults can’t ever experience that level of freedom again, simply because we are scared of looking ridiculous or failing or making mistakes. When they draw, my kids have no fear. And that’s the hardest trick for an artist.

– Liniers

 

Light

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / Leave a comment

On a late afternoon, I walked out of the Montpelier Library and down the street. The trees along the street were shedding their pale yellow leaves in a balmy, golden light; the sidewalks were busy with children, the afternoon commute already inching its way home.

I walk this way frequently, and always, at one particular place, in front of the stately Montpelier Inn, I remember one evening I stood there, many years ago, with my baby daughter on my back. It was late October then, although I don’t remember any cold. Instead, I remember swaying from foot to foot, already habituated to holding a baby – in my arms or on my back – and watching the twilight creep in, the day’s pale light slowly passing to dusk.

I remember that afternoon-slash-evening as one of the longest pauses in my adult life, waiting for someone who never appeared. Later, I realized my message had gotten lost along the way.

It’s odd, how even in the sunniest and lightest moments of our lives, there’s the past we keep walking through – and I do keep walking, every time, heading back into the busyness of my life – this afternoon, at least, graced with that lovely autumn light.

The trees go on burning
Without ravage of loss or disorder.

From Donald Hall’s “Letter In Autumn”

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