poetry

Holy Language.

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 1 Comment
Montpelier, Vermont

On a rainy day last week, I parked on a Montpelier side street and walked into town to attend an opioid summit as a writer.

The last time I had been in the conference space in the Plaza Hotel was nearly precisely two years ago, when I attended a conference as a journalist, charged by my editor to “make connections,” and spent most of it drinking coffee and eating sugar cookies and talking with a para-educator at my daughter’s high school about his experiences. Like darn near everyone else in Vermont, he has a side gig for income, and runs a seasonal bakery.

I sat at a table with people I admire who I’ve met through writing. For those few hours, I had the nearly heady experience of meeting new people; I had remember that deep pleasure. Years ago, I traveled on a train from Charlottesville, VA, to Chicago, and sat beside a man from West Virginia. We talked off and on for those hours. It’s been so long since I had that experience of just listening and talking with people.

For a few hours, I listened to stories about addiction and struggle, about suffering and redemption, about profound loss and grief. Listening, my heart grew full. Our stories and words, the act of telling and listening, of sharing the hard and the beautiful things in our lives, bound us together. The summit began and ended with singing. I’ve never been one for group activities, for open sharing, but at that moment, I utterly understood; I got it. The melody of our language and experiences pulled us together, acknowledging both the beautiful and the terrible about human life, and made our world shine brighter.

…. Grateful to have a terrific piece about Unstitched run in the Brattleboro Reformer and the Manchester Journal by Gena Mangiaratti. And The Rumpus included my essay about the backstory of Unstitched in their Voices On Addiction column this month.

Bald Eagles. Vermont State House.

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 6 Comments
Montpelier, Vermont

Sunday, we bought coffee and pastries in Montpelier (for a change of venue, a change of scene) and ate outside in the cold. There’s a pandemic, after all, and bakeries open on the weekend had closed their indoor seating anyway. None of us complained or even remarked — something I silently noted.

On this cold morning hardly anyone was walking. We passed a man sitting beside an apartment building, flossing his teeth. My youngest pointed out a bird gliding high above the state house. “Bald eagle.”

Bald eagles have recently been removed from the endangered species list in Vermont. I noted again how eagles are now part of our life. Last summer, in particular, we saw eagles frequently. I grew up in New Hampshire and never saw either an eagle or a loon my entire childhood. Now loons (also removed from the endangered species list) have always been part of my daughter’s life.

We walked up the street and then returned. The eagle was still silently gliding on its immense wingspan.

Like eagle that Sunday morning

Over Salt River…

Breathe in, knowing we are made of

All this…

~ Joy Harjo

Sugar. Salt. Stars.

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 5 Comments

The air has turned this morning when I step outside in the dark with my bucket of hot stove ashes. Even without my coat, I’m not immediately shivering, and the cold doesn’t come at me with daggers on my face.

Beneath the starry sky, I gazed up at Ursa Major, a single gauzy cloud suspended overhead, as if in water. I’m reminded of frog’s eggs, those cushiony pillows I sought with my daughters when they were little. Every spring, we found clusters in ponds and in the ditches along our dirt road. We’d visit these clusters every day on our wanders. Sometimes the eggs hatched. Sometimes the clustered disappeared.

On this early February morning, beneath the stars, I stood for a few more quiet moments, thinking about stars and frogs’ eggs. Snow’s expected to move in soon, too.

As water given sugar sweetens, given salt grows salty, 

we become our choices.

~ Jane Hirshfield

January. Twenty Below Zero.

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 2 Comments

Daughter and sap line

20 below this morning as I head out to start my car. The moon hangs in a crescent over our house, visible through the smoke from our wood fire. In January, Vermont, the days creak along with the cold.

In an evening meeting, it’s just me at the town hall, holding that physical place as an open meeting law requirement, everyone else virtual from their living rooms or home offices. From the hallway, I pick through a box of cast-offs and take a pair of Teva sandals. A kind of promise, for another season.

Tonight as it gets cold 

tell yourself 

what you know which is nothing 

but the tune your bones play 

as you keep going. 

— Mark Strand

Color.

/ Brett Ann Stanciu / 8 Comments

We’re nearly at midwinter, the turning-around point of early February. The ice is hard; there’s snow; the light returns, an extra dipperful of it each day.

There’s that Currier & Ives vision of midwinter, nestled deep in fluffy snow that I’ve experienced in a few flashes. This year, unease eats us all around the edges, in strange kinds of ways. A shortage of kitty litter in the supermarket. What does that mean? Maybe nothing worth thinking about at all.

I buy a gallon of paint at the local hardware store. The young man who mixes it went to high school with my daughter. He puts the paint to shake, and I wait and wait in my winter coat and my knitted hat. I remember the first summer I canned so much from my garden and the endless jars I bought here — invested in, really — so many mason jars. High on a storage shelf above my head are those boxes of Ball jars, waiting for tomatoes and green beans and chutney.

He reappears, his face mostly hidden behind his mask. With a key, he opens the can of newly mixed paint. For a moment, he stands there, studying it. Then he asks if that yellow is the right color. I tell him, Yes. He hammers back on the lid, then pushes the can towards me. Good luck, he says.

As I walk out, I wonder if he means good luck with the color, or the painting, or just generally. But what’s the point, really? We all could use a little good luck.

Lovely review of Unstitched in Carved Spines. Thank you!