Here are some disparate things that are bobbing around in my head that may, or may not, have any relationship to each other: Seamus Heaney’s poetry, the love my parents have for each other, chipmunks, planning to eat what’s best for me and eating something entirely different and, and the clock ticking, ticking.

It’s amazing how many thoughts one mind can circulate in a given hour. I can watch the chipmunks in the yard scramble up and down the trees, chase each other and whip their striped tails up and down while talking with my husband on the phone about signing a new lease at the office, how much the increase will be and whether we should commit to two or three years, all the while thinking it’s time to eat breakfast and I’m kinda cold so really don’t want my protein drink—oatmeal sounds good—I could throw some almonds, raisins and blueberries in and that would be healthy. And, that’s just the start–who knows how many other random images and emotions flitted through my mind’s twisting caverns during those few minutes? Who knows?

I’m here in Oregon to write and to work on organizing some of the pieces I have written in the last couple of years in the e-letter to see if there is a possible book in such a compilation. This is the first quiet day so far this week. I just got back from the spa—hot tub, sauna and massage—and am beginning to feel human after jetting down here and then spending three days with my mom, one of which was driving her over the pass from here to Portland (3 hours one way) and then coming back in the same day. We visited Dad, who is currently in a nursing facility due to health issues. They are so sweet together—Mom gives Dad a hug and then turns to me and says, “I have to kiss him five times,” and they proceed to kiss gently on the lips. He is shocked to hear she was gone for only three days. “It seemed like a year,” he said. They just celebrated their 62nd wedding anniversary, each at the age of 85.

Mom & Dad–with his Univ. of Oregon blanket!

That leaves me two more subjects to cover: Seamus Heaney’s poetry and time ticking, which is relatively easy as I’ve been reading poems from Heaney’s latest collection, District and Circle and am in awe, once again at his ability to craft language in such a way that evokes 3D images of the places, the things and the people that he portrays. He brings a living history to his poems and that history is seen through relationships—how the work we do, the families we are born into, the country, county and village we live in and the values we hold dear shape us and give us a place in the continuum. I think this is what I am dealing with in the slippage of time—can I establish the place that is mine in history? Is there still time? Can I be patient? Or, could it be true that it exists right now and it is only my lack of visual acuity keeping me from seeing it? Ah, mystery and mastery—two such valiant and powerful knights. They are who I must contend with and they have no concept of what is or was or will be. These two speak only the language of the eternal now, allowing for clarity and uncertainty to co-exist, for paradox and poetry to dance together and to dispel any notion that we either live or die. We simply are.

Poem by Seamus Heaney
District and Circle
Farrar, Straus & Giroux, Publishers

A Shiver

The way you had to stand to swing the sledge,
Your two knees locked, your lower back shock-fast
As shields in a testudo, spine and waist
A pivot for the tight-braced, tilting rib-cage;
The way its iron head planted the sledge
Unyieldingly as a club-footed last;
The way you had to heft and then half-rest
Its gathered force like a long-nursed rage
About to be let fly: does it do you good
To have known it in your bones, directable,
Withholdable at will,
A first blow that could make air of a wall,
A last one so unanswerably landed
The staked earth quailed and shivered in the handle?