Surviving during the Pandemic

Keeping Busy

Being someone who needs nature for my mental health, this has been a tough couple of months. I have been out walking my neighborhood and some woods (safely with a mask, of course) whenever the weather cooperates. I have also been reading and writing a lot. This is one of the poems I have written during this isolation. This is survival for me.

 

Pandemic Response

 

This earthbound isolation is like quicksand,

survival by being still,

endless waiting, waiting,

keeping hands busy, mind empty.

 

But I need to ride the clouds spread

on the searing blue sky,

burrow myself into bright blossoms like a bee,

douse my eyes in the water of ponds’

shivering reflections searching for life –

tadpoles or tiny fish —

only this, only this

keeps me alive.

 

Susan Merrifield Desrocher

c 2020

SAD is real

Frenzied leaves

Every year around this time I go through it. I have my reasons: feeling disconnected at the holidays, my birthday, the anniversary of my failed marriage, the anniversary of my beloved father’s death. Despite this defensive litany, I know it started long before any of that. It is the grayness outside, the darkness inside. It is an annual battle; it is my civil war.

 

Civil War

One would think after all my years
I would be better prepared for this annual battle,
but I’m never sure exactly which day it will begin.

It could be early autumn:
the first chilly day, when the north wind barks its arrival,
sending multi-colored leaves into a frenzied formation,
a whirling activity that mesmerizes me in place.
Or it could be late autumn, when the dried leaves
huddle in the hollow places before the snow comes.
Or it could be when the holidays advancing
with their flags and torches beneath gray skies
and heavy clouds, like a low cellar ceiling,
fans my fears with a kind of claustrophobia.

But sometimes it is a sudden attack —
coming face to face with another birthday,
a civil war, the most brutal of battles,
so close-up and personal,
and the best I can do is cowardly sneak
away from the fray,
and stay away from mirrors.

C 2017 Susan Desrocher

Thinking of William Blake

When I took a class on the Romantic poets in college, William Blake was one of my favorites. I remember watching the movie “Bull Durham” not long after that at a time when I was crazy about baseball (and Kevin Costner), and I loved the movie even more when Susan Sarandon’s character quoted Blake at Costner’s character!

Today I was getting ready for a writing workshop that I run once a month, looking through a (VERY) old poetry book (copyright 1876!) and I came across one by Blake. It is funny how sometimes the right poem comes up at the right time. I especially love when I can’t put my own feelings into words and come across words by someone else that describe my feelings or situation better than I can.

I was walking through a graveyard yesterday while out taking pictures and I was taken by two matching gravestones. Not only do they pair well with each other, I think they pair well with Blake’s poem. What do you think?

Husband and wife headstones

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

THE GARDEN OF LOVE

I went to the garden of love,

And saw what I never had seen;

A chapel was built in the midst,

Where I used to play on the green.

 

And the gate of this chapel was shut,

And “thou shalt not” writ over the door;

So I turned to the garden of love,

That so many sweet flowers bore.

 

And I saw it was filled with graves,

And tomb-stones where flowers should be;

And priests in black gowns were walking their rounds,

And binding with briars my joys and desires.

 

WILLIAM BLAKE

 

Skating on Thin Ice

Ice Skating

 

SKATING ON THIN ICE

Too many indoor days bundled
together drew me out into the record chill.
At the pond in my old hometown
a few hardy souls I didn’t know
were skating in ski masks
in the early winter dusk.
With my camera I froze
their silhouettes against the shimmering ice
like pinned starfish.

I could be crazy,
a crazy craving headlines,
at any cost,
so I tried to be subtle
with my snaps,
keep my zoom lens distance,
not alarm the nervous parents
in parkas on the dock
waving their children in.

I stood on the treed shore,
remembering solid-color snowsuits
and Wonder bread bags in boots,
hand-knitted mittens, and laughing
slides across the same ice
without skates.
Back before fake news and Facebook
our parents shooed us outside;
they trusted our judgment
and the good will of others,
and we trusted the winter ice
to stay solid
and unchanging
beneath us.

Holiday Quiet

It isn’t a holiday for me, I have to go to work, but others in my building sleep in. I don’t force myself to do my normal morning chores, not wanting to disturb my silent community. And so I enjoy the company of my cats and write.

I absorb the silence,
the peace of the cat’s purr.
My tea is simply warm,
no longer hot,
but my tongue lounges silent
in the gold sun of the honey
swirled with the soft clouds of milk.
Perfection
seems so close
I could reach out
and caress it with my hand,
but I know better.
Just as I sometimes
have to let my eyes alone
revel in the swirling softness
of color in my calico cat’s fur,
knowing if I touch her,
she will slip away
and find another place
to sleep.
Susan Merrifield Desrocher

Fur Painting

Obsession

First of all, thank you to those loyal readers who have visited in the last year even though I have posted very little: Ana Linden, G.P. Cox, Janna Hill, Tyler4Turtles, and Hands on Bowie (among others). I have been obsessed with all my photo groups on Facebook and virtually ignoring my blogging community. I will try to do better from now on! One day a week is better than once in a blue moon.

I had been working on this poem for a while and decided to match it up with this old photo I had posted many years ago. I hope you like it.

A dock for a headstone…

The Obsession

Half my life ago
I was drawn to you
like a swan to a pond.
I thought I could make
my home in the depth of your eyes:
the warm brown of cattails
with lashes like the tassels
of tall grasses,
a perfect place
for nesting.

Initially my wings were fueled
by desire, but when I landed,
it was the smoothness
of your being,
the clear bubbling joy
of your laughter
in the quiet moments
that locked me into love.

But I soon found that
another laid claim
to your deepest heart —
my comfort was marred
by the fierce hiss
of possessiveness.
I should have known
something so beautiful
could not be unclaimed.

I flew off, but not away,
thinking I could keep
to the fringes,
find a connected waterway,
a secret way in.
I circled and circled
around and around
until I became a wisp
of a cloud,
like the fabled tiger
turned to butter.
In the end,
unsure of who I was
or why I did it,
I crashed hard
into a wooden dock,
wings splayed,
my stretched neck
broken.

 

Copyright Susan Desrocher

Odd Pictures, Odd Stories

I admit it, I often take odd pictures. (Like this.)

Backyard Still Life?

Sometimes I never use them (though I used this post as an excuse to use the headless mannequin), but sometimes an idea immediately comes to me.

Duck Down

When I saw this duck basket on the ground, it immediately took me back in time. Though it is not exactly the same (this one is much more attractive), at a place I used to work, a duck basket was used as a good luck charm, a totem reflecting a secret wish. Ugly and old and full of paper clips, the red and green duck basket was passed down from person to person for years; it symbolized a changing of the guard, so to speak for our little group.

Whenever someone left the company, the duck was given to the person they thought was the next person most likely to leave. Sometimes the dusty duck sat on a desk for years, sometimes months. Did those not in the know ever wonder about it?

I was once the recipient of the duck, and it worked its magic; I no longer work there. Who I passed the duck to when I left, I no longer remember, so I don’t know if it worked for them. I wonder…is the duck still being bequeathed or discarded like this one? Did it lose its significance? I guess I’ll never know…

Scenic Overlook

Scenic Overlook

For some reason I have never been able to find a writing partner, someone who is not too much better than me or no worse than me, someone who writes in my style, who instinctively understands me, or at least wants to understand me. So when I have a bad day, I either put on the fake cheer on Facebook, which is acceptable to most people, or write in a vacuum to get my thoughts and feelings out, producing yet another poem to stick in a bulging notebook of unread, unpublished efforts.

So yesterday was one of those days for me and this is the result. I am taking the leap of sharing my poem here with whatever readers I have left (considering that I haven’t made my blog a priority for a long time or kept up with the people I used to follow faithfully).

SCENIC OVERLOOK

Some would say life has brought me backward.

I grew up poor in a rich town

where I had to hide my dark hair

beneath a golden hat, which only

made me feel hot and awkward.

Now I live poor in a poor town,

a place most of my old classmates

wouldn’t get caught dead in,

but at least I blend in:

another gray wisp of a cloud

on a sunless day,

another brown leaf on the ground

of a winter wood full of leafless trees

in muddy March

when spring’s new hope

feels like a crazy dream…

But I digress.

 

Yesterday I drove through some rich towns —

just looking —

not like an open-mouthed tourist

but like a coroner searching for clues to a death.

I examined the details as I saw them:

the handsome man with the perfect haircut

jogging on my side of the road

wearing clothes that I recognized

cost more than two week’s of my groceries,

(he forced me to the wrong side on a curve).

Then I pulled over to gaze at a view,

and to avoid the impatient BMW surging

at my back bumper, like the rough waves

against at the rocks at the beach

with the “No Trespassing” signs, whose beauty

I had to observe from afar.

 

But I will keep my scientist stance

because I don’t like the flavor

of bitterness.

I theorize the owners of these million dollar mansions

with empty yards would naturally

look like the jogging man because their parents

looked the same, and because beauty and wealth

go together like cut glass and cognac.

Why would hothouse plants live among weeds

that may choke them

to death?

 

Happy Anniversary to Me and Happy New Year to Everyone Else

Although I have just celebrated my 7th blogging anniverary, last year I posted very little. As I explained in my last post on this blog, I have been concentrating on photography as my main mode of expression. That being said, one takeaway I have from last year is that there is more than one way to make a difference. Some people do it through charity work, some through political activism, some through the arts, and some through their chosen profession.

Which way?

The year 2016 was a tumultuous year, full of terrorist acts, celebrity deaths, and an ugly election that exposed a gaping rift in our human community. After the sudden death of an old friend in March, I went through a questioning of my future and life purpose. Because of him, I decided to pursue a certification as a teacher. I studied for, and passed, the basic test all teachers in Massachuesetts must master: the Communication and Literacy Skills Test. I began to study for the more difficult English exam, because it has been 25 years since I received my MA in English Literature. As the year went on and life interfered, I worked overtime at my present job and continued to pursue my passion for photography; I began to question whether I had the stamina for such a big undertaking at my age, and I recognized that I cannot fill the hole that he left in the world. I have my own unique purpose for being here and what I bring to the world is not the same as anyone else. This is the source of all our grief: the people we lose cannot be replaced, not even by someone expressing themselves in the same form. David Bowie was not Prince and Prince was not Merle Haggard…everyone speaks their truth in a different voice.

And so, in 2017, I will not compare myself to others. I will leave competitveness, guilt, and jealousy behind and try to be the best I can be at expressing my truth in my own way. Does that mean I will blog more? I would like to say yes, because I still feel writing is important to me, but I have discovered it is my protective armor, my way of coping with darker feelings; it helps me to understand them and relieve the tension they create. But I want to bring brightness to the world, help others cope with a year like 2016. To do that I must put my best self out there, and I feel I can do that with my pictures.

So Happy Anniversary to me, WordPress, I’ll write when I can bring something positive to my readers. In the meantime, check out my other blog where I will try to be better about sharing my pictures. Happy New Year everyone!

 

Weekly Photo Challenge: Local

Notecards

This Saturday I am working my first craft show; I’m pretty nervous. Could this be the start of something? Or just another false start?

I started this blog over 6 years ago to keep myself writing and see where it would lead. I met some very interesting people from around the world and gained some validation for my poetic efforts, but aside from that…it did not change the course of my life.

But I started another blog, Last Train to Qville a few years ago and discovered (rediscovered?) a love of photography. And I found my tribe! I tailed off with my writing here and became smitten with going out and finding beauty within the small ordinary life I was living.

Fast forward to my craft show: I decided to print up some photos I took of local landmarks in my town as notecards. They are my first set in what I hope to be a series for all the local towns in my area. Wouldn’t we all like to feel proud of our ordinary lives and see the small beauties that surround us in our troubled world?

I hope so…because the beauty is there if we look for it.